Tag: Daniel Vuillermin
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Christopher Wren and blood circulation
Richard de GrijsSydney, AustraliaDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China “A young man of marvellous gifts who, when not yet sixteen years of age, advanced astronomy, gnomonics, statics, and mechanics by his distinguished discoveries, and from then on continues to advance these sciences. And truly he is the kind of man from whom I can shortly expect great things.”…
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Longitudinal lunacy: Science and madness in the eighteenth century
Richard de Grijs Sydney, Australia Daniel Vuillermin Beijing, China Interior of Bethlem Royal Hospital, from A Rake’s Progress by William Hogarth. The poor soul in the background is trying to solve the longitude problem. “A couple of young Non conformist preachers from Worksop in the North of Derbyshire came thither to have my approbation…
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“Marvailous Cures”: sympathetic medicine connecting Europe and China
Richard de Grijs Sydney, Australia Daniel Vuillermin Beijing, China Application of a powder of sympathy. Source: Tentzel A (ed) 1662 Theatrum Sympatheticum Auctum (Nuremberg: Johann Andreas Endter & the Heirs of Wolfgang Endter Jr), p 125 (Reproduced with permission, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, 30.4 Med.: VD17 23:290712A.) In Renaissance Europe the concept of curing illnesses…
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Measure of the heart: Santorio Santorio and the pulsilogium
Richard de GrijsDaniel VuillerminBeijing, China The heart is a musical organ. The irregularity of one’s inhalation and exhalation of air defies musicality, while the involuntary rumbling of moving gas in the intestines is embarrassingly analogous to the timbre of the tuba or trombone. Biomedical terminology and poetry are seemingly antithetical, but of the heart they…