‘We could not answer to ourselves not doing it’: maternal obligations and knowledge of smallpox inoculation in eighteenth-century elite society

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 (258) ◽  
pp. 754-770 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Esfandiary
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Disease Management ◽  
English Version ◽  
Live Virus ◽  
Humoral Medicine ◽  
Smallpox Inoculation ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
The Way

Abstract Most often depicted as the precursor to the much simpler and safer practice of Jennerian cowpox vaccination, the eighteenth-century practice of inoculating against smallpox with the live virus reveals much about the way in which pre-modern mothers and medics understood and made decisions about disease management in children. Examined from the perspective of those mothers who ultimately sanctioned its use and helped to advance the practice on English soil, despite a complex set of possible eventualities - from uncertain conferral of immunity to death - this article argues that provided an ‘English’ version of it was carried out in strict accordance with the age-old doctrines of humoral medicine, mothers deemed it an entirely rational act devoid of ‘risk’ in our modern sense. These findings run counter to established narratives asserting blanket professionalization and medicalization of childcare during this period, and they nuance the role Lady Mary Wortley Montagu played in introducing the practice she had encountered in Turkey.

The Way of Hilton: Esprit de Corps in the UK and the USA in the Twentieth Century

Ensemblance ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 194-229
Author(s):  
Luis de Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
English Version ◽  
Trade Unionism ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Team Spirit ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Way

This chapter shows how and why English uses of the idiom ‘esprit de corps’ in the twentieth century were not only increasingly frequent, but also dominantly laudative. The English version of the phrase tended to forget the pejorative political meaning invented by the Philosophes in the eighteenth century. If esprit de corps continued to thrive in several discourses (military, political, intellectual and theoretical, corporate, sports...), it was with a meaning that was increasingly generic and standard, often close to the idea of team spirit with a bellicose and enthusiastic twist. American managerial discourse reinvented esprit de corps in the twentieth century as an anthem of what the author proposes to call regimental capitalism,an alternative to trade-unionism The chapter also narrates the case of Conrad Hilton, the founder of the international chain of hotels, who explicitly transplanted his experience of military esprit de corps in France during WWI into his philosophy and practice of management.

John Ray, physico-theology and afterwards

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
John Ray ◽  
The Way

Ray's most widely read book was his Wisdom of God manifested in the works of creation (1691), probably based on addresses given in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge 20 years previously. In it he forswore the use of allegory in biblical interpretation, just as he had done in his (and Francis Willughby's) Ornithology (1678). His discipline seeped into theology, complementing the influence of the Reformers and weakening Enlightenment assumptions about teleology, thus softening the hammer-blows of Darwinism on Deism. The physico-theology of the eighteenth century and the popularity of Gilbert White and the like survived the squeezing of natural theology by Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises a century after Wisdom … , and contributed to a peculiarly British understanding of natural theology. This undergirded the subsequent impact of the results of the voyagers and geologists and prepared the way for a modern reading of God's “Book of Works” (“Darwinism … under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend”). Natural theology is often assumed to have been completely discredited by Darwin (as well as condemned by Barth and ridiculed by Dawkins). Notwithstanding, and despite the vapours of vitalism (ironically urged – among others – by Ray's biographer, Charles Raven) and the current fashion for “intelligent design”, the attitudes encouraged by Wisdom … still seem to be robust, albeit needing constant re-tuning (as in all understandings influenced by science).

Maclaurin on Occasionalism: A Reply to Ablondi

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 125-135
Author(s):  
Patrick J. Connolly
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Article ◽  
Gravitational Attraction ◽  
Matter Theory ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Short Essay ◽  
The Way

In a recent article Fred Ablondi compares the different approaches to occasionalism put forward by two eighteenth-century Newtonians, Colin Maclaurin and Andrew Baxter. The goal of this short essay is to respond to Ablondi by clarifying some key features of Maclaurin's views on occasionalism and the cause of gravitational attraction. In particular, I explore Maclaurin's matter theory, his views on the explanatory limits of mechanism, and his appeals to the authority of Newton. This leads to a clearer picture of the way in which Maclaurin understood gravitational attraction and the workings of nature.

Scots and Access to Spanish America from Before the Union to 1748

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Lenman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Political Life ◽  
British State ◽  
Scottish Politics ◽  
Partial Integration ◽  
The Way

This article begins with the idea that there was a vigorous political life in Scotland in the first half of the eighteenth century which could focus on issues other than Jacobitism or government patronage. The article focuses on the non-dynastic issues in Scottish politics that predated the Union and which carried on into the Westminster parliament to the accompaniment of considerable activism in Scotland, and a distinctive contribution from Scottish members of both houses of the legislature. The example here examined is the burning issue of securing commercial access to the forbidden lands of Spanish America. Studying it reveals very clearly that ‘The theme of Scotland's partial integration into the British state’ and the way in which it ‘was never wholly successful’, goes back to the very start of the eighteenth century.

Haydn, meter, and listening in transition

2010 ◽  
Vol 51 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 141-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Grant
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Aesthetic Experience ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Music And Literature ◽  
Late Works ◽  
The Way

In recent years, music theorists and analysts have devoted a great deal of attention to the phenomenon of hypermeter, drawing some of their most representative examples from the late works of Haydn. Although this recent trend in analysis has shed much light on Haydn’s music, it has left questions of history distinct from the mode of listening it engages. This article argues that the way we understand conceptualizations of listening and aesthetic experience can greatly inform the way that we understand hypermeter and the question of style in history. Drawing on eighteenth-century theories of music and literature, it recontextualizes Haydn’s hypermetric style with respect to a larger world of aesthetic experience.

Drezno w relacjach polskich osiemnastowiecznych peregrynantów. Rekonesans .

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 ◽  
pp. 26-43
Author(s):  
Marcin Pliszka
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
The City ◽  
The Way

The article analyses descriptions, memories, and notes on Dresden found in eighteenth-century accounts of Polish travellers. The overarching research objective is to capture the specificity of the way of presenting the city. The ways that Dresden is described are determined by genological diversity of texts, different ways of narration, the use of rhetorical repertoire, and the time of their creation. There are two dominant ways of presenting the city: the first one foregrounds the architectural and historical values, the second one revolves around social life and various kinds of games (redoubts, performances).

Between History and Nature

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Waldow
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Philosophy Of History ◽  
Literary Translation ◽  
Scientific Models ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Hermeneutic Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Way

From within the philosophy of history and history of science alike, attention has been paid to Herder’s naturalist commitment and especially to the way in which his interest in medicine, anatomy, and biology facilitates philosophically significant notions of force, organism, and life. As such, Herder’s contribution is taken to be part of a wider eighteenth-century effort to move beyond Newtonian mechanism and the scientific models to which it gives rise. In this scholarship, Herder’s hermeneutic philosophy—as it grows out of his engagement with poetry, drama, and both literary translation and literary documentation projects—has received less attention. Taking as its point of departure Herder’s early work, this chapter proposes that, in his work on literature, Herder formulates an anthropologically sensitive approach to the human sciences that has still not received the attention it deserves.

What are those without faith doing in liturgical enactments?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Wolterstorff
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The Way

Often there are, among those who participate in some liturgical enactment by saying the prescribed words and performing the prescribed bodily actions, some who are lacking in faith: they do not have faith that the doctrines presupposed by the prescribed acts of worship are true. Why do they nonetheless participate in the way described? And what are they doing when they participate? Are they just going through the motions? Is that possible? Or are they, for example, thanking God even though they lack faith that God exists and is worthy of being thanked? Is that possible? These are the main questions addressed in this chapter. The chapter closes with a discussion and appraisal of the sincerity movement in eighteenth-century England, whose members insisted that worshippers should only say what they feel at the moment; to act otherwise would be insincere. And insincerity is a vice.

Natives, Religion, and Race in Colonial America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linford D. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
The Other ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
Religion And Race ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
Over Time

Although racial lines eventually hardened on both sides, in the opening decades of colonization European and native ideas about differences between themselves and the other were fluid and dynamic, changing on the ground in response to local developments and experiences. Over time, perceived differences were understood to be rooted in more than just environment and culture. In the eighteenth century, bodily differences became the basis for a wider range of deeper, more innate distinctions that, by the nineteenth century, hardened into what we might now understand to be racialized differences in the modern sense. Despite several centuries of dispossession, disease, warfare, and enslavement at the hands of Europeans, native peoples in the Americans almost universally believed the opposite to be true. The more indigenous Americans were exposed to Europeans, the more they believed in the vitality and superiority of their own cultures.

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