Jędrzej Śniadecki i jego dziedzictwo. Sesja Nadzwyczajna podczas 61. Zjazdu Naukowego Polskiego Towarzystwa Chemicznego

Jędrzej Śniadecki and his legacy. Extraordinary Session at the 61st Scientific Meeting of the Polish Chemical Society The year 2018 marked the 250th birthday anniversary of Jędrzej Śniadecki (30 Nov 1768–11 May 1838), a renowned Polish chemist, doctor and columnist. Jędrzej, the younger brother of Jan Śniadecki, a Polish mathematician and astronomer, was born in Radlewo near Żnin in Greater Poland. His family and professional life was associated with Vilnius. From 1803, he was a professor of chemistry and medicine at the Principal School of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which then became the Imperial University of Vilnius. He was the author of the first chemistry textbook in Polish (1800) and an innovative work entitled Teoria jestestw organicznych (Theory of Organic Beings) (1804). The birthday of Jędrzej Śniadecki was celebrated in the three countries to which his fate was tied: Belarus, Lithuania and Poland. Celebrations in Poland: The year-long celebrations in Poland started on 28 January 2018 with a concert at the Main University Auditorium of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. It was organized by the PoznańSociety of Jędrzej Śniadecki, Karol Olszewski and Zygmunt Wróblewski. In March 2018, celebrations were inaugurated by the town of Żnin, with the event being attended by descendants of the Śniadecki family: Prof. Antonina Magdalena Śniadecki-‑Kotarska, Senator Piotr Łukasz Juliusz Andrzejewski and Krzysztof Śniadecki-Lempke. A lecture on Jędrzej Śniadecki and the Society of Rascals was delivered by Emilia Maria Iwaszkiewicz, PhD, from Vilnius University. The University of Science and Technology in Bydgoszcz (UTP) also commemorated the scholars it has chosen as its namesakes, that is Jan Śniadecki and Jędrzej Śniadecki. A report on the event and an article by Emilia M. Iwaszkiewicz, PhD, are available in Magazyn UTP Format 2.0 No. 3 from July 2018. In Kraków, during the 61st Scientific Meeting of the Polish Chemical Society, a session was organized entitled “Jędrzej Śniadecki and his legacy”. During the session, five papers were delivered which presented Jędrzej Śniadecki, his academic and journalistic output and memorabilia related to him. Celebrations in Lithuania: On 10 September 2018, Vilnius City Hall held a conference attended by Urszula Doroszewska, the Polish ambassador to Lithuania, and Edyta Tamošiūnaitė, the Deputy Mayor of Vilnius, as well as Polish and Lithuanian scholars. On 11–13 October 2018, at the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences was held the 4th Oxygenalia International Conference. Belarus: The memory of Jędrzej Śniadecki is also cherished in Belarus, especially in Gorodniki where he is buried and at the nearby school in Kolchuny, which houses a small museum commemorating him and other scholars with ties to this region.

Analysis of museum labels description

The aim of the study was to analyse the content of museum labels from various periods in terms of their usefulness in creating new labels for exhibits included in museum collections. Nearly 5,000 museum labels from the years 1811 to 2017 were reviewed, for exhibits at the Museum of Zoology of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, Herbarium of the University of Wroclaw, and the Museum of Forensic Medicine at the Medical University of Wroclaw. On the basis of the collected information, an attempt was made to develop a ‘universal label’template, including a range of necessary information from the point of view of managing and maintaining the accessibility of the relevant collection.

Medycyna w ujęciu Jędrzeja Śniadeckiego

Medicine in terms of Jędrzej Śniadecki Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838) remains one of most eminent scholars of his times. Remembered as a founder of modern chemistry in Poland, one of early pioneers in anthropology and social sciences, and author of the two volume book Theory of organic being (Teoria jestestw organicznych), in which the modern metabolic concept of life processes can be considered as grounded; he was also a highly educated and gifted physician. This paper aims to show the importance of medicine in Śniadecki’s theory of life, in its physiological and pathological manifestations in regard to the clinical model and the medical practice which he followed. It deals with the concept of illness as described in Śniadecki’s writings, focusing on the role of irritation and organic reaction as the major components of his proposed pathological model. The dynamic and variable conditions of diseases are explained by means of metabolic changes, which was a truly pioneering concept, already described in Śniadecki’s earlier theoretical works on the subject of life and nature. The paper discusses the problem of influence in terms of the leading medical doctrines at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, namely those of John Brown (1735–1788) and François Broussais (1772–1838), on Śniadecki as a researcher and practitioner. For practical (clinical) medicine his reserve towards auscultation and percussion, then a slowly gaining field in clinical subjects, is clearly present in Śniadecki’s writings and teaching. His passive and, as far as we can tell, sceptical attitude is explained by the lack of convincing evidence, based on empirical and experimental data, which would enable to connect the physical signs of a diagnosis fulfilled by means of stethoscope to that of the percussion process. It must be remembered that the books by Adam Raciborski (1809–1871) and Joseph Škoda (1805–1881) were both published in the 1830s, where modern diagnosing methods were established using a suitable scientific background to explain their importance. This was too late to influence the clinical work of Śniadecki. The same scepticism, with an obvious demand for strict and experimentally derived data, is probably responsible for the conservative therapy present in Śniadecki’s teaching.

The Physics Cabinet of the University of Padua. At the crossroads between Veneto and Europe

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, new lectures in natural philosophy based on direct and immediate demonstrations began to spread through Europe. Within this context, a chair of experimental philosophy was created at the University of Padua in 1738, and the new professor, Giovanni Poleni, established a Cabinet of Physics, which became very well known in eighteenth-century Europe. In the following two centuries, Poleni’s successors continued to acquire thousands of instruments used for teaching and research, which today are held at the Museum of the History of Physics of the University of Padua. The present paper describes the main peculiarities of the collection, comprising instruments from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. We also discuss the current acquisition policy of the museum, aimed at collecting material evidence of the research and teaching activities in physics that are carried out in Padua today. We will outline both the local peculiarities of the collection and its international dimension, based on the contacts that have been established throughout the centuries between Padua and the international scientific community. Some aspects of the circulation of scientific knowledge in Europe and beyond will thus also emerge.

Between an object and a tale: Strategies of local narratives construction in semi-peripheral museums

The primary aim of this article is to single out and interpret the processes of constructing images of locality in regional museums in the Podkarpackie Province and in the Košice Region, as well as to indicate phenomena which affect these processes. We are interested primarily in discussing individual components of legacy (local, national, material, immaterial, etc.) and using them to build a sense of identity in museum visitors. Relying on the principles of the new museology: “protect –examine –inform”, we focus on the last of these spheres, which refers directly to the practice of creating meanings that engage both museologists and the public. When we single out the field of research, we position the subject of our inquiry in the context of the theory of globalisation, which means that we regard the specified areas as peripheral within semi-peripheral countries. This specification of the field is supposed to help us determine whether local museums in Central Europe still function within the framework of the traditional (modernist) paradigm or whether they have fully or partially implemented the principles of the “new museology”. In the course of the analysis, we show that the process of constructing locality is a matter of control over legacy and its interpretations. However, it is not an action which depends solely on a museologist, who has to deal with time pressure and the availability and completeness of a collection when creating his or her narrative. It means that in reference to educational museum activities, we should rather talk about multiple images of locality, the construction of which is affected by various factors. The material was gathered from in-depth interviews conducted in selected Polish and Slovak museums, thanks to which this article reflects primarily the museologists’perspective on the problems in question.

Plany ścieżki muzealnej Uniwersytetu Medycznego we Wrocławiu

Plans for the museum path of the Medical University in Wrocław People have always been interested in discovering their past and seeking answers to their existential questions. Therefore institutions like museums, which collect exhibits related to the history and development of humans, have been known since antiquity. However, museology today has changed and is no longer confined to establishments related to popular fields like painting, sculpture and archaeology. Nowadays, there are also museums dedicated to medical sciences, which present the history of humanity in the sphere of its biological development. The Medical University in Wrocław can boast of several such establishments, although so far they have been treated as separate institutions. For this reason, the idea was created to combine them all into a single museum route, and to make it available to a broader visitor base. Thanks to this, people can view items from old and modern medicine practice located in many different sites, allowing them to deepen their knowledge and expand their interests. To make it easier for visitors to navigate through such a diverse complex, a special museum path has been created, along with a description of each location.

Krakowskie pamiątki po Jędrzeju Śniadeckim

Jędrzej Śniadecki memorabilia from Kraków This article presents the results of a search for memorabilia related to Jędrzej Śniadecki (1768–1838), a prominent Polish chemist, doctor and columnist. He was born in Żnin in Greater Poland, educated in Kraków and his professional life was associated with Vilnius. This search for memorabilia related to Jędrzej Śniadecki (except for archival materials) was conducted in Vilnius and Kalczuny in Belarus, which has a school museum devoted to Jędrzej Śniadecki and other scholars. However, no personal belongings related to the scholar were found at these locations. At present, the only items known to have belonged to Jędrzej Śniadecki are included in the collection of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. These items are: an 18th-century microscope, a line gauge dating to 1834 and a ceremonial spade which formed an element of the academic regalia worn by professors of the Imperial University of Vilnius. The article discusses the above mentioned items and their provenance. In 1964, the microscope was transferred to the Jagiellonian University Museum in Kraków from the Botany Unit of the Jagiellonian University by Professor Władysław Szafer (1886–1970) with the information that it had belonged to Jędrzej Śniadecki. It is a Cuff-type microscope made of wood, cardboard, bone and glass, manufactured in Nuremberg. The microscope attributed to Śniadecki bears the initials JFF. It is not a high quality product, but microscopes from Nuremberg gained popularity as toys rather than test instruments. The second item attributed to Jędrzej Śniadecki is a 24-inch folding line gauge which consists of two parts. It was bought in 1957 by the Jagiellonian University Museum from Professor Andrzej Ciechanowiecki, who had inherited it in 1945 from Maria Kazimierzowa Osiecimska-Czapska (née Śniadecka), a great-granddaughter of Jędrzej Śniadecki. In the family, this item was regarded as a memento of Jędrzej Śniadecki which came from Boltup. Another memento of the scholar is a ceremonial spade. Tradition has it that it belonged to Jędrzej Śniadecki and was an element of the ceremonial regalia worn by the professors of the Imperial University of Vilnius. In 1878, the spade was donated to the Archaeological Cabinet of the Jagiellonian University by Kazimierz Jan Wilczyński (1806–1885), a doctor, art collector, publisher and member of the Vilnius Temporary Archaeological Commission.

Chemia Jędrzeja Śniadeckiego

The chemistry of Jędrzej Śniadecki In Poland, Jędrzej Śniadecki was a continuator and one of the promoters of the French school of chemistry, initiated by the works of Antoine Lavoisier. Śniadecki came into contact with the foundations of this school, which included a new definition of the chemical elements, the principle of mass conservation and the oxygen theory of combustion, while still studying at the university in Kraków. His later studies at European universities and his knowledge of the most recent literature ultimately channelled his views on chemistry. This was reflected in Śniadecki’s academic publications, in particular in his textbook: Początki chemii: stosownie do teraźniejszego tey umiejętności stanu dla pożytku uczniów i słuchaczów ułożony y za wzór lekcyi akademickich służyć mające (The Beginnings of Chemistry: Composed in Accordance with the Current State of This Skill for the Benefit of Students and Auditors to Be Used as a Model for Academic Classes) Vilnius, 1800. It was the first original chemistry textbook in the Polish language. The author used his own chemical terminology, modelled after the new French terminology. The Polish systemic chemical terminology, which conveyed information about the type and composition of a given substance, had been introduced by Śniadecki three years earlier, during his lectures at Vilnius University. The names proposed by Śniadecki caught on and were used in Poland for several decades. Jędrzej Śniadecki’s original contribution to global science was his theory that explained the phenomenon of life and the interdependencies between matter in the animate and inanimate world. This theory, published in the years 1804–1811, in Warsaw in three parts, was translated into German and French. The Polish edition was entitled Jędrzeja Śniadeckiego medycyny doktora Teoria jestestw organicznych ( Theory of Organic Beings by Jędrzej Śniadecki, Medical Doctor). The first part was of great significance for the development of organic chemistry. When this work is compared with later publications by Justus Liebig, it can be shown that Śniadecki’s views had an impact on the writings of this German scholar.

Szable w kontekście badań nad bronią dawną – przyczynek do dziejów bronioznawstwa polskiego

Sabres in the context of research on historical weapons – a contribution to the history of Polish hoplology This article is an attempt to provide a comprehensive view on the history of hoplology in relation to the most popular type of weapon used in the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the sabre. The research history addresses the issue of modern weapons, which is motivated by the emergence of various types of sabre at that time. Research on old weapons, inspired primarily by collectors, museologists and members of academia, traditionally uses a range of methods developed by history, art history, archaeology and art restoration. Such research can also enter the field of sociology and cultural studies, provided that we take into account the fact that weapons, sabres in particular, symbolized social standing. The variety of issues, which are generally confined to the above mentioned concepts, also translates into the historiographic sphere. Because of that, it may be surprising that Polish literature on historical weapons only dates back to the second half of the 19th century. However, collectors had shown interest in military items much earlier. The first part of the article presents the most important private collections of weapons from the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, with particular focus on the almost entirely preserved collection of Izabela Czartoryska, who founded the first museum in Poland. This layout is the starting point for presenting academic interest in military items, divided into the pre- and post-war periods.

Późnoantyczne tkaniny jedwabne z Achmim w zbiorach muzeum Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego w Krakowie

Late Antique silk fabrics from Akhmim in the collection of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków The paper presents so-far unpublished fragments of Late Antique silk fabrics in the Jagiellonian University Museum (MUJ). According to the archival documentation they derive from the collection of the Alsatian archaeologist, Robert Forrer (1866–1947), who was one of the pioneering collectors and dealers in Late Antique textiles from Egypt. Silks in the MUJ belong to the group of “Zachariasstoffe”, said to be found in Akhmim in Upper Egypt. Parallel fragments can be found in many European and American museums.