Denis Papin's digester and its eighteenth-century European circulation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Marco Storni
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
High Pressure ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Chemical Research ◽  
Chemical Laboratory ◽  
Meal Preparation ◽  
Home Cooking ◽  
The Needy

Abstract The digester, invented by Denis Papin in the 1680s, was a rudimentary pressure cooker used to soften hard bodies by boiling them at high pressure. In this paper, I propose a reassessment of Papin's work on the digester, arguing that his research was located at the intersection of the chemical laboratory and cooking practice. I then examine cases from the eighteenth-century European circulation of the instrument in Sweden, Italy and the Netherlands in order to showcase the different practices in which the digester was embedded, including chemical research, philanthropic projects to feed the destitute, and proposals for the improvement of home cooking. The digester's history represents a key episode for demonstrating the intertwined nature of natural-philosophical research and the practice of economy or ‘thrift’. All users of the digester engaged in a rationalization of its functions through quantification, not only to fulfil a concern for precision but also to display the device's potential to reform practical daily life. The digester could save time and fuel, reduce material waste, make cooking easier and foster collective meal preparation for the needy.

Melancholia, Slavery, and Racial Pathology in Eighteenth-Century Cuba

2005 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrián López Denis
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Clear Picture ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Sugar Plantations

Between February of 1797 and July of 1798, Francisco Barrera y Domingo, a Spanish surgeon, wrote an extensive treatise on slave medicine in the Caribbean. Entitled Reflexiones Historico Fisico Naturales Medico Quirurgicas, this 894-page manuscript accounts for eighteen years of its author's professional practice in the region. It provides a clear picture of daily life in the sugar plantations as seen through the eyes of a modest surgeon, thus presenting us with an opportunity to explore the ideological and intellectual universe of this “invisible” category of colonial practitioners. Despite its importance, Barrera's Reflexiones remains almost unknown. Only a handful of scholars have even acknowledged the existence of the volume and no systematic analysis of its content is available in English.

1649: Revolutionary Turnpike

2020 ◽  
pp. 300-308
Author(s):  
Jonathan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
American Frontier ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Relative Decline ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
City Of London ◽  
The City ◽  
And Diffusion ◽  
Dramatic Growth

This concluding chapter discusses how the Anglo-Dutch revolution of 1649–1702 stood at the centre of a succession of wider transformations which were agricultural, political, and commercial. All of these had their origins in the Netherlands before spreading to south-eastern England and across the Atlantic. Understanding their development and diffusion has required attention to religion, migration, and war as well as to economic, social, and cultural life. The result connected a series of unique local human environments, including the Dutch water world, the city of London, and the American frontier into a world-altering imperial system. By the later eighteenth century the Atlantic reorientation of the European economy had thrown the Baltic into relative decline, sparking the dramatic growth of Liverpool, Manchester, and Glasgow while Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam stagnated.

scholarly journals Ethyl alcohol, a product of high pressure syntheses

1931 ◽  
Vol 131 (818) ◽  
pp. 533-540 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
High Pressure ◽  
Ethyl Alcohol ◽  
Personal Experience ◽  
High Pressures ◽  
Catalytic Reactions ◽  
Chemical Research ◽  
Chemical Research Laboratory ◽  
Pressure Synthesis ◽  
Corroborative Evidence ◽  
Made In

In opening the “discussion on catalytic reactions at high pressures,” one of us (G. T. M.) referred to experiments made in the Chemical Research Laboratory of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research which had led to the isolation of notable quantities of ethyl alcohol among the condensation products from carbon monoxide and hydrogen interacting at high temperatures and pressures in presence of catalysts. These experiments were first described in March, 1928, and since that date statements have appeared in the scientific press to the effect that ethyl alcohol is a possible exception to the whole sequence of higher alcohols which can be produced by such interactions. Moreover during the above-mentioned discussion Mr. M. P. Appleby, speaking on behalf of the Imperial Chemical Industries, Ltd., Billingham, said “that in our experience we have never succeeded in obtaining, with any catalyst whatsoever, more than a mere trace of ethyl alcohol.” To the latter statement we take no exception whatever. It is a record of personal experience. But we felt that it was desirable to substantiate our earlier experiments by such corroborative evidence as would leave no doubt that ethyl alcohol is a product of high pressure synthesis.

Catawba

Fit for War ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Elizabeth Fitts
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Territorial Expansion ◽  
Charles Town ◽  
The Core ◽  
The North

Chapter 3 documents the emergence, composition, and political interactions of the Catawba Nation through the mid-eighteenth century. Between the Spanish incursions of the 1560s and the establishment of Charles Town in 1670, a group of Catawba Valley Mississippians known as Yssa rose to become the powerful Nation of Esaws that formed the core of the eighteenth-century Catawba Nation. In the late seventeenth century this polity was a destination for European traders as well as American Indian refugees fleeing hostilities associated with the Indian Slave trade and settler territorial expansion. While many of these refugees were from the Catawba River Valley, others—most notably the Charraw—were Piedmont Siouans who fled southward from the North Carolina-Virginia border. The incorporation of refugees had significant implications for Catawba politics and daily life, which are explored in subsequent chapters.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 239-258
Author(s):  
Meredith McNeill Hale
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
First Century ◽  
Political Satire ◽  
South Sea ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Battle Scenes ◽  
Intensive Investigation

This concluding chapter focuses on the question of circulation and impact: to what extent did De Hooghe’s satires travel beyond The Netherlands in the seventeenth century and what influence did they have on English political satire of the eighteenth century? The appearance of motifs from De Hooghe’s satires in mezzotints of c.1690 and prints on the subject of the South Sea Bubble of 1720 will be discussed as will instances in which De Hooghe’s satires were reissued in the eighteenth century. However, a comparison of this handful of examples with the liberal use of De Hooghe’s triumphal allegories and battle scenes in such distant locations as Latin America and Russia reveals one of the qualities that epitomizes political satire—its dramatic circumscription by temporal and geographical boundaries. Satire’s embeddedness in a specific political, historical, and cultural moment and its dependence upon text that often channels the idiosyncrasies of spoken language, render it difficult—often impossible without intensive investigation—to understand beyond its immediate context. This is as true for twenty-first-century satires as it was for those produced in the late seventeenth century.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document