Category: Science & Pseudoscience
Culpeper’s Complete Herbal Review By Cheryl Bolen
Many of us have run across references to the famed herbal by Nicholas Culpeper in the course of our research into various aspects of Regency medicine and horticulture. Though it was originally published in the mid-seventeenth century, it was still in print during the Regency. Not only was it still considered an important medical reference, many gardeners relied upon it to determine which plants to cultivate in their kitchen gardens. In today’s article, Cheryl Bolen reviews a more recent reprint of Culpeper’s best-selling herbal, in which you will learn which plant "stirs up bodily lust" and which plant is a "gallant expeller of wind."
Regency Railways by Linda Banche
Railways in the Regency era?
Linda Banche explains how Regency Railways did exist.
1808 Richard Trevethick's Steam Engine
Linda Banche says….. We think of the railroad as a Victorian invention, but railroads as we know them today got their start during the Regency.
Goods and people have always traveled from one place to another. But such movement was limited to what animal power could provide (hence the term “horsepower”) until the invention of the steam engine.
Laughing Gas by Angelyn Schmid
Laughing Gas at Landsdowne House by Angelyn Schmid
Lansdowne House
The third Marquess of Lansdowne was no stranger to the rich and famous that came to the great London house. His father had hosted Benjamin Franklin (1706 – 1790) when the latter came to negotiate the terms for American independence.
One who was credited with the discovery of oxygen, Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804) ran tame at Lansdowne House as well, living off the largess of the first marquess when he was still Lord Shelburne.
Doctors in the Regency By Alicia Rasley
Old St. Thomas's Hospital, Southwark
Doctors in the Regency By Alicia Rasley
The first realization about medicine in the Regency era is that it bears almost no resemblance to modern medicine. The great discoveries that have helped most of our great-grandparents live long enough to create our grandparents were yet to be discovered.
What historian Roy Porter calls “The Three A’s” were developed later in the 19th Century and into the 20th:
❖ Anaesthesia
❖ Antiseptics (and antisepsis)
❖ Antibiotics (ultimately)
So when you imagine a medical practice without those three, well, you’ll probably think of Regency-era physicians as not much advanced since the Middle Age alchemists and astrologers.
Looking To The Stars
A while ago on my ongoing series about nineteenth century heroines, we talked about Caroline Herschel, who learned astronomy from her famous brother, William Herschel (he discovered the planet Uranus, though he wanted to name it George), and went on to make many discoveries of her own. The nineteenth century was the time of the Grand Amateur—men and women who, by interest, ability, and fortune, made major contributions to the sciences like astronomy. There was something noble about discovering something new, whether it was a planet or the internal workings of a combustion engine.
Discovery wasn’t, however, easy.
In astronomy in particular, the tools were still plagued with difficulties. Many astronomers still studied the heavens through little more than spy glasses. Most available telescopes involved refracting light through carefully crafted glass lenses rather than reflecting it through mirrors. These lenses sometimes gave their images a colored glow about the edges, making it hard to observe some celestial phenomena. Telescopes that did reflect the light used speculum, metal made from bronze and silver to create a mirror-like substance. Unfortunately, it tarnished easily and distorted the image.
In his quest for better viewing equipment, William Herschel learned to grind his own lenses, coat his own mirrors, and make his own telescopes. He started with smaller scopes, like this 7-footer . . .
then graduated to larger ones like this 20-foot goliath.
His skill was so great that other amateurs, including the King of Spain, commissioned scopes from him. Through a grant from King George III, he built a 40-foot-long telescope with a 49-inch mirror at his home in Slough, near Windsor, in what would be called Observatory House. It was the largest telescope in the world at the time, and a source of many visitors, until the Earl of Roth, an Irish peer, build a larger scope in 1845.
But even these mammoth scopes had problems. They were often mounted in such a way that turning them was difficult. If you were lucky, the dais on which they were built could be hand-cranked to swivel the telescope both horizontally and vertically, but this positioning could take hours or days. So basically you could watch a single slice of sky on a given night with a larger scope, which was not conducive to scanning the skies for anomalies or hunting comets.
And why would you want to hunt comets, you ask? That was one of the most exciting aspects of astronomy, your chance to make a name for yourself, to go down in history. All comets discovered during the early nineteenth century were first sighted with the naked eye, so anyone could get into the game.
Posted with permission of the author.
