“Humbly dedicated”: Petiver and the audience for natural history in early eighteenth-century Britain

2004 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-329 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. A. James
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern Britain ◽  
Eighteenth Century Britain ◽  
Insight Into

Over the winter and spring of 1713–1714, Dr Patrick Blair (1666–1728) acted as agent for James Petiver (c. 1664–1718) while in Dundee and Edinburgh, promoting the London apothecary's publications on natural history. Blair was successful in attracting a readership for Petiver's works, despite enduring the diffi culty of having to wait for Petiver to act on his promise to supply the publications. Publications - through presentation copies, dedications, or subscriptions - were used as compliments to attract individuals into the network of correspondence and acquaintance by which natural history in early modern Britain was conducted. These dedications also exhibited the readership to itself, acting as a social advertisement for natural history. Blair's endeavours in 1713–1714 offer insight into the role of audience in the practice of natural history in early-modern Britain.

Mechanica Medicina Sacra: Biblical Vegetarianism in Philippe Hecquet’s Theological Medicine

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 539-560
Author(s):  
Julia Reed
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Spiritual Health ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Biblical Literalism ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
Distinct Kind

Abstract In the early eighteenth century, the French Jansenist physician Philippe Hecquet began publishing prolifically on the benefits of what he called “meatless medicine,” calling for a “Catholic cook” to guide France’s physical, moral, and spiritual health. This paper analyzes Hecquet’s defense of vegetarianism as an early modern example of a distinct kind of Biblical medicine – what Hecquet termed “theological medicine” – in the context of his understanding of bodily mechanism, natural history, and Biblical literalism, in his Traité des dispenses du carême (1709) and La medecine théologique, ou la medecine créée (1733). I argue that vegetarianism was the first principle of Hecquet’s Biblical medicine, which he considered both a natural and revealed truth to be grasped and applied by the pious physician.

Persons in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century British Philosophy

Persons ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 154-181
Author(s):  
Antonia LoLordo
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
David Hume ◽  
John Locke ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Moral Personhood ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Early Modern Britain ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines the rise of the problem of personal identity and the relation between moral and metaphysical personhood in early modern Britain. I begin with Thomas Hobbes, who presents the first modern version of the problem of diachronic identity but does not apply it to persons. I then turn to John Locke, who grounds the persistence of persons in a continuity of consciousness that is important because it is necessary for morality, thus subordinating metaphysical personhood to moral personhood. Finally, I examine how the relationship between moral personhood and metaphysical personhood is treated in three of Locke’s critics: Edmund Law, Catherine Trotter Cockburn, and David Hume.

The Decline of Magic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Great Change ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Spiritual World ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Early Modern Britain

In early modern Britain, belief in prophecies, omens, ghosts, apparitions and fairies was commonplace. Among both educated and ordinary people the absolute existence of a spiritual world was taken for granted. Yet in the eighteenth century such certainties were swept away. Credit for this great change is usually given to science — and in particular to the scientists of the Royal Society. But is this justified? This book argues that those pioneering the change in attitude were not scientists but freethinkers. While some scientists defended the reality of supernatural phenomena, these sceptical humanists drew on ancient authors to mount a critique both of orthodox religion and, by extension, of magic and other forms of superstition. Even if the religious heterodoxy of such men tarnished their reputation and postponed the general acceptance of anti-magical views, slowly change did come about. When it did, this owed less to the testing of magic than to the growth of confidence in a stable world in which magic no longer had a place.

scholarly journals Tobacco-Taking and Identity-Making in Early Modern Britain and North America

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Angela McShane
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Britain ◽  
Revolutionary America ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century ◽  
Revolutionary Period ◽  
Material Evidence

Abstract This article explores the praxis of transatlantic snuff- and tobacco-taking and its importance to personal and national identity-making over the long eighteenth century. It focuses in particular on the role of snuff- and tobacco boxes, which uniquely provided white middling-sorts on both sides of the Atlantic with a socialized canvas upon which significant statements of status, personality, and sensibility could be made. However, a closer study of these objects during America's revolutionary period reveals stark contrasts in the social, political, and gendered meanings ascribed to tobacco-taking between Britain and America. The material evidence, it is argued, suggests that for men, and especially for women in revolutionary America, snuff- and tobacco-taking became almost synonymous with loyalty to the republic.

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