Author: Alexander Chin

The book Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru: Apothecaries, Science and Society provides detail on how apothecaries in Lima practiced medicine and dealt with the new materials that existed in the newly colonized land. In doing this, the book describes how the apothecaries chose not to shift away from their traditional Galenic and Humoral practices. To do this, Newson presents what could be called a micro-history which focuses almost exclusively on a small profession in one colonial city. But by doing this, Newson can provide a detailed account of the factors that influenced the Spanish apothecaries to keep up with their traditional practices. And by doing this, Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru, shows how a medical profession with the means and ability to innovate largely maintained its ways in an entirely new environment.

Professor Linda Newson is currently an emeritus professor at King’s College London and previously focused on the impact of colonial rule on native populations, especially with respect to the effects of disease on these populations. For her previous work, she received the Carl O. Sauer Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers and the Back Award from the Royal Geographical Society. Even though both of these awards are for her geographically focused work, they show a high level of ability in scholarship on Latin America. Although Newson previously focused mainly on the demographic impact of disease on native populations, she has more recently worked on the practice of medicine in colonial Spain. And though her focus has changed from disease to medicine, he focuses on the Spanish colonies comes through in her work on Lima in this book.

In this book, Newson successfully argues that although apothecaries could have become innovators in the new world, they tended to adhere to traditional practices and import their medical materials from Spain. Chapter One describes why Newson chose to focus on the apothecaries of Lima and establishes the argument as to why they were largely not innovators in the medical field. The focus on the apothecaries in this book is because they are uniquely situated in Spanish medicine to have both the knowledge of the materials and how they are used in medicines, whereas the physician does not have as detailed of knowledge of the actual materials in medicines. This is then used to show how the Galenic and Humoral practices are ingrained within the practice of medicine in Spain and its colonies during this period.

Chapters Two and Three describe the way in which apothecaries were trained and how an apothecary established their business; this then sets up the description in the following chapters as to why traditional practices were maintained in Lima by the apothecaries instead of adopting the plants and practices of the new world. Chapter Two shows how apothecaries were trained in Spain as well as the process by which they were certified by the government. This version of the apothecary business was then used in Peru as they were part of the Spanish Empire. Chapter Three then shows how an apothecary business was created, and by doing this, Newson shows the similarities between the way an apothecary business was created in Spain and Peru. For both chapters, there is a distinct similarity in the way apothecary businesses ran in both Spain and Peru, which goes to support why the traditions of medicine were maintained in the new world.

Chapters Four through Six provide the bulk of the information on how apothecaries obtained their materials and practiced making medicines. Chapter Four shows how the trade influenced the use of medicine imported from Spain. It shows how prices rose on Spanish medicines, but surprisingly colonial apothecaries did not look to new types of plants. Chapter Five shows how the government was involved in maintaining traditional humoral practices in medicine. This took place both because the apothecaries were encouraged legally to maintain traditional practices and because the physicians who prescribed the medicines used traditional humoral solutions. Chapter Six shows the actual practice of making medicine, and again shows a focus by apothecaries on using materials produced in Spain and, if those were unavailable, Old-World plants produced locally. In all three chapters, Newson shows how Lima apothecaries tended toward traditional products for their medicines because of their training and the nature of the practice of medicine in the Spanish Empire.

Chapter Seven changes the book’s focus away from the practices of an apothecary in Lima to their social status and reputation. This section focuses on how the social status of the apothecaries of Lima differed from those in Spain. The major difference is the status and leniency toward apothecaries in Lima because of their short supply. The Chapter later goes on to show how the apothecaries of Lima showed their professionalism through their dress by attempting to focus on sober black clothing to emulate the Spanish monarchs. This further shows how the apothecaries attempted to show their professionalism and set themselves apart as purveyors of medicine they considered below themselves.

This book makes excellent use of various sources, like the books of the town council of Lima and especially collections of the transactions that took place in Lima. One of the most interesting uses of primary sources in Making Medicines in Early Colonial Lima, Peru, is to create interesting tables and graphs. These are used to great effect in chapters four and five to present what was being shipped to Lima and how much this cost to the apothecary, as well as in chapter six to show what kinds of medicines were being made by apothecaries and what they should have. This helps show how close to the practice of medicine the Lima apothecaries were to their counterparts in Spain.

This book provides a very detailed account of how apothecaries in Lima practiced medicine. Because of this, it gives further context to the practice of medicine in the new world and speaks to books like Prospero’s America and Missionary Scientists. This book shows how the Spanish apothecaries continued to practice the medicine very much like their Spanish counterparts, which supports the idea presented in Missionary Scientists that the Spanish used their medicine to show the superiority of their practices, although the apothecaries seemed less willing than the Jesuits to accept the use of native healers. As this book provides information on a very specific topic with a great amount of detail and works to provide more information on how medicine was practiced in the new world, it is best suited for scholarly audiences.

In the book Thrifty Science: Making the Most of Materials in the History of Experiment, Simon Werrett worked to show how scientists in the seventeenth end eighteenth centuries made use of places and items not currently considered scientific to conduct their experiments. To do this, Werrett presented how scientists would make use of everyday objects and places to conduct their experiments with the items they had. Early modern scientists also worked to repair and reuse the more specialized equipment and with other scientists to share their materials. This was done because an environment existed that supported the use and reuse of everyday materials to work as the base of knowledge production. This is then used to further research on the history of household science as well as the history of recycling and its relation to scientific history.

Werrett is currently a Professor of the History of Science at University College London who primarily works on the interaction between the arts and the sciences from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. Werrett achieved his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and previously worked for the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. Werrett has previously worked on historical works focused on the oeconomic nature of science and its thrifty nature. Because of his current research focus on the interactions within science, he is well suited to a work on how science interacted with the economic perspectives at this time.

This book strived to show how the “oeconomy” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created research that was far more resourceful than in their research than in later periods. To do this, Werrett used both the correspondence and works of early modern scientists to show the materials they used and their perspectives on their tools. This use of sources created the sense of how the scientists believe science should be done by presenting the tools they described and created the sense that this was a common practice by using messages between many different scientists. Using these methods, Werrett presents the histories of multiple prominent scientists and their use of common household materials equipment and its repair to conduct their science. This creates a well-defined sense of how scientists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries practiced what we might now call a thrifty science.

Chapter one shows how managing a household in the seventeenth century was inherently thrifty, as this was expected for proper household management. To do this, Werrett used the works of people like Francis Bacon and books on the oeconomy of a household to present the thrifty nature of life in this period. This focus sets up this information on the oeconomy of science during this period by presenting ideas that would now be considered thrifty as part of daily life. And by doing this, Werrett set up how repurposing household goods was a part of life during this period.

Chapters two through five describe where and how science was done in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and how this process did not include the waste of materials or space. These chapters use the works of scientists in this period to show how scientific discoveries were made using household equipment and showed how consideration was taken in scientific works so that they could be recreated using equipment that people would have. They also show how items were repurposed to continue their use with few exceptions. This section creates a sense of the thrifty practices used within the household to continue research with the equipment at hand.

Chapters six and seven present the extent to which second-hand materials were used and reused within science. In these chapters, Werrett presents both the resale of scientific equipment, the growth of auctions, and their place within early modern science. Chapter six interestingly used the trade cards of businesses to argue the resale of scientific equipment and the possible ubiquitousness of repairs to the use of scientific equipment. Where chapter seven showed the growth of auctions as a part of science and their growth in prominence, and the idea that an auction was not only used as a way to decrease the price of science. Together these chapters help support the argument of thrift inherent to the science of the time by showing that repair and second equipment were not considered inferior.

Chapter eight concludes by connecting the thrifty oeconomy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries became the economy of the science of the nineteenth and future centuries. This chapter presents a different argument than the rest of the book by showing how science became specialized and moved away from its previous use of general household equipment. Although this section does not detract from the general argument of the book as it takes place outside of the period of the rest of the book, it felt as though it was unnecessary to prove the book’s central theme. This is because chapter eight presents the specialization of equipment and the decline of thrift in science, which supports the opposite of the rest of the book. For this reason, chapter 8 felt out of place with the rest of the book and its main argument.

Through this argument, Werrett worked to build on both histories of household science and the history of recycling. Because one of the book’s main arguments was that there was no concept of wasting in science during this period, Thrifty Science situates itself with the study of early modern recycling very well. It also worked to support and expand the history of household science, like Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, by presenting how science during the early modern period worked mainly within the home and with its resources. The contents of Thrifty Science also worked to expand on the difficulties of conducting science in the colonies during this period, as seen in books like Prospero’s America. In all these areas, the book worked to expand on the historiography of the cultural aspects of early modern science.

This book’s goal was to “make the household visible in early modern science” (p. 5) it is aimed mainly toward a more scholarly audience. Although the book is written in a way that a popular audience could easily read it since it does not present any difficult concepts seen in some histories of science, it is primarily intended for the scholarly audience. This is because Werrett’s work focuses on a narrow topic and is mainly designed to engrain itself with larger arguments of the importance of recycling and the household within early modern science. But, for this reason, Thrifty Science is well suited for its intended audience.

Prospero’s America tells the story of John Winthrop Jr., specifically about his work on alchemy. This is done as a case study to show “the distinct and pervasive ways in which alchemical beliefs influenced colonial society.” (p. 3) To do this, Woodward touches on many different types of history, from political history to scientific history and many others, to present the cultural history of how John Winthrop Jr. and alchemy affected early New England’s culture. Woodward primarily uses the Winthrop Papers as the source pool to do this. The use of this source pool is both a blessing and a curse for the book, as it does provide a large amount of information on Winthrop and his life, but because of the nature of the collection, it contains mainly the letters he received. The other major challenge with the source pool is the secrecy that alchemists, Winthrop included, placed on their work, meaning that Winthrop primarily did not write to others about his alchemical work. For Prospero’s America, this creates a silence within the argument of the book of the actual alchemical work that Winthrop was doing. Still, because of the wealth of incoming letters, the book is able to support the argument of alchemy’s influence on early New England.

Woodward is the Connecticut State Historian emeritus and was previously the State Historian of Connecticut. Woodward received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut and focuses on the history of Connecticut and New England with multiple works on topics of witchcraft and alchemy. The past topics of Woodward’s works show a high level of knowledge on alchemy within Connecticut, making him a strong interpreter of the effects of alchemy on the culture of Connecticut. The book Prospero’s America specifically has won the Homer Babbidge Prize from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History, showing a view of the importance of the history of Connecticut.

The main narrative of this book focuses on the acceptance of alchemy within colonial New England and the effect that this practice had on the puritan culture of this period, and the cultural nature of Winthrop’s alchemical work. To do this, Woodward presents the development of New England’s view of Winthrop and how this was impacted by his views on alchemy. This story is separated into several sections that cover the breadth of Winthrop’s work within New England, his plantation of New London and develop the colony of Connecticut. These ideas all work to support the idea; Winthrop developed as an alchemist developed with Christian morals and millenarian ideals in mind, countering the idea of economically driven developments.

The first two chapters of this book set up the ideals of the alchemical movement that Winthrop worked within and tried to support in his projects. This section sets up the idea of the broader community of alchemy that Winthrop acts within. This section works to support the view of alchemists that travel and the idea that knowledge could only come from having the correct morals. This works to support the larger argument that alchemy worked within Christian morals to bring about the millennium.

Chapters three through five show how Winthrop worked within New England to create a space for pansophic learning to grow. In doing this, these chapters focus on New London, as this is where Winthrop intended to grow the pansophic movement by attracting other alchemists to join him on the plantation. This section also works to show how Winthrop attempted to work with the Native Americans near his plantation in a more harmonious way than other colonists. And in doing this, Woodward shows how through his ideals and the support of others, Winthrop plays politics poorly. As a whole, this chapter shows how Winthrop created his plantation with the moral ideal of progress in mind as he worked to create a space to generate more knowledge and work with natives through their culture instead of forcing them to conform to European standards.

In chapter six, Woodward shows how alchemy was deeply ingrained into the medical beliefs of early New England. Of the chapters of the book, this chapter focuses the most on the practice of alchemy done by Winthrop, and because of this, this chapter was an interesting view into the practice of medicine within early New England. It did this by showing how important Winthrop and his practice in New London were to people trying to become well in this period. In this, Prospero’s America showed how people viewed Winthrop as one of the best sources of medical information in New England. And because of this, the chapter heavily supports the idea that alchemy was considered an important part of the culture of early New England.

The final two chapters show the political landscape of New England at this time in both the politics of New England witch trials and the court of England. To do this, chapter seven shows how Winthrop worked as Governor and someone who worked as a prominent alchemist to influence Connecticut away from its previously harsh reaction to witch trials to a more moderate stance. And in chapter eight, Woodward presents how Winthrop used his connections as an alchemist to influence the King and his representatives within New England to be more favorable towards his goals for Connecticut. By doing this, Prospero’s America shows how Winthrop’s work as an alchemist gave him more standing to work politically within New England.

This book is largely written for an audience of scholars so that it can work to counter the argument of the argument that alchemy was done for economic purposes. Because of this, the book is intended to counter this argument it has a level of detail that is greater than many readers may wish but suits the intended audience. This book speaks to the public perception of the alchemist, specifically working as a physician in the new world, and expands on the views of doctors as seen in Sloane in Collecting the World. It also works to counter the idea that the market drove alchemists; instead, the book successfully argues the moral aspects of alchemical work, with profit being only a secondary aspect to many alchemists. Overall, Prospero’s America successfully works to show the integration of alchemy and alchemists within the culture of New England, showing how alchemy was an important part of puritan society.

The book Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England by Dr. Elaine Leong presents the accumulation of household scientific knowledge by using family recipe manuscripts to show how families accumulated knowledge and tested it. Throughout the first five chapters of Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, Leong uses a number of recipe manuscripts, acquired mainly from archival research, with the Wellcome Library being a significant source of information, as sources to provide case studies that show how upper-class society compiled information and tested it in a scientific way. In the final chapter, Leong adds the use of printed recipe books and home manuscripts to show how families used these printed versions similarly to the use of family manuscripts. This source pool focuses only on English manuscripts and print works, which skews the information and practices toward what was done in England, but it also helps the relatively narrow scope of the book. It also provides an interesting source for the book since the writings come from both male and female actors, countering the idea that the recipe collection process was seen as solely part of the female sphere.

Leong works at University College as a history lecturer and achieved her doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford. The book Recipes and Everyday Knowledge also received the 2019 Margaret W. Rossiter Prize from the History of Science Society, showing the high quality of this book on the topic of women in scientific history. She is currently working on a book project called Reading Rivière in Early Modern England, which also studies knowledge production, maintenance, and transfer. Because of this focus in her scholarship, Leong represents a strong author to write a history that focuses largely on knowledge production and transfer.

The main argument of this book is that studying the recipe books of 17th-century households shows the broad connections of the knowledge-making community and represents another process of knowledge-making in this period. To do this, Leong separates the book into four main sections, which explain the social aspect of making these manuscripts, the process of testing them, and how the knowledge was passed on, with the final chapter moving away from the household manuscript to the published recipe books. These chapters are mostly formatted with case studies making up most of the content. The case study format allows the author to show how the families, not scientists as we know them, collected and tested medical knowledge through experiments with the recipes. This information allows Leong to successfully that the house during this period was an important place for the generation of knowledge.

The first significant section of this book is chapters one and two present the social connections in creating these recipe books. This section shows how the collection and spreading of knowledge in recipe books was an essential part of both social relations and patronage at this time. This section shows the cultural importance of a family collecting information for their family book and how that information was spread between families. This process represents a cultural phenomenon similar to and part of patronage since it represents part of the gift-giving culture and the culture of favors created by sharing these recipes. By showing the collection process, these chapters set up the testing shown in the following chapters and show the gathering of knowledge done by a family.

The middle two chapters of the book, chapters three and four, present how the knowledge gathered for these books was tested and verified. The middle chapters represent an essential part of the book’s argument because they show how families proved the recipes collected by the process of the previous section. These chapters present how the authors of these family collections verified the information they took in and put varying levels of effort into recipes from more or less important people. This section, more than others, presents how the creators of family books experimented with the recipes they gathered. By doing this, the author expands on the process of knowledge collection that existed in the books period.

The final section based solely on recipe manuscripts is chapter 5, which explains how knowledge was passed on through these books. This chapter of the book felt out of place when moving from the previous to chapter five, as the book changes from use and collection to the passing on of these works to descendants. But even though the move between chapters felt odd as a change in the topic, it represented an important part of the book’s larger argument. This is because this chapter showed how “the younger generation … placed great value on the family book.” (p. 145) By showing the importance of passing on knowledge with the family books, Leong supports the idea of the cultural importance of knowledge collection within families. Within the context of the larger argument, this chapter proves a culture of family knowledge gathering seen not only in the writers of the recipe manuscripts that survived.

The book’s last chapter focuses not on the household manuscripts but on the printed recipe books, which show similar practices to the family manuscripts, but with a few key differences. The significant difference with the published recipe books is that they largely did not provide where recipes came from other than the name of the author of the collection. But they are similar to the family manuscripts in their use and the way they were created. This is because when acquired by families, the printed recipe books tended to be tested and added to similar to the books created by a family. Furthermore, in their creation, the print books were functionally identical to the family books since they were published versions of important people’s recipe collections. For these reasons, the use of print recipe books presents another example of how families collected and tested knowledge to generate their own knowledge, as shown in the book’s central argument.

This book is written for an audience of historians of medicine and historians of science, and because of this, the narrow and detailed topic of the book fits well for the audience. This audience works well with the content of the book as it presents a detailed account of a specific subject and tries to expand on the knowledge about the knowledge that was created through “household science.” (p.4) The book also expands on the idea of knowledge collection by presenting a lower-level method of collecting knowledge. By doing this, Leong shows how the noble population worked with experiments like those in books like The Poison Trials without being a part of the scientific community of the time. The change of the main actor away from those who viewed themselves as men of science presents another part of the scientific culture of this time. This focus sets the book within the “current conversations in gender and cultural history, the history of the book and archives, and the history of science, medicine, and technology.” (p.4) For this reason, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is a valuable book for scholars who wish to expand their knowledge of how people other than scientists expanded experimented with medicine and the natural world.

Engineering the Eternal City: Infrastructure, Topography, and the Culture of Knowledge in Late Sixteenth-Century Rome by Pamela O. Long provides a view into the construction projects of Rome during the mid to late 16^th century, which represents a significant period of Roman reconstruction and improvement after many devastating floods. In addition, the sections of this book present the contested nature of Roman politics, specifically about the construction, especially as new Popes redefine the necessities for Rome. Pamela O. Long is an independent historian who focuses on the history of science and technology; she specifically focuses on the interactions between scholars during the early modern period. In the past, Dr. O. Long has published numerous books that deal with the interactions between science, technology, and culture within late medieval and early modern societies. Engineering the Eternal City fits well with O. Long’s previous work as it looks at the interaction between the construction projects during the late 16^th century as well as interactions between the self-described engineers, Capitoline Council, and the papacy to create large-scale construction projects.

This book focuses on a relatively narrow period of about 30 years to shed light on the inner workings of construction projects during this period, as well as show the contentious nature of construction and describe how far from modern construction during this period was. Within this period, O. Long shows how the changes in the papacy caused the rise and fall of different building projects; she also shows how patronage was as important as previous work for obtaining a contract. The numerous examples of attempts to improve Rome each individually show how it was not the strength of the proposing architect that determined the success of the project, but instead, it was the financial and political support from two governing bodies within Rome that decided both the architect and if a construction project would happen. This idea is used to show how construction within Rome in the late 16^th century was as much a cultural process as a process of technological improvement to revitalize the Eternal City. To make this argument, O. Long presents multiple examples of successful and failed projects and the culture surrounding architecture during this period in Rome. These examples can be separated into four main sections, the failures to prevent floods and sanitation, contests over aqueduct and road building, the culture surrounding architecture in Rome, and the remaking of Roman roads and obelisks.

She begins the book with examples of the failure of a project to solve the Tiber River flooding issue and continued failures at attempting to improve the perceived sanitation of the city. These two examples show that during this period, there was no system in place for projects that were widely seen as in the public good to be undertaken. Although there were numerous writings on flooding, “a solution to Tiber River flooding was not found in the sixteenth century” (p. 41), but the common discourse on flooding by the Roman elite helped move engineering into “learned culture.” (p. 41) Sanitation within Rome suffered from significant issues for urban construction during this period; first, sanitation suffered from a lack of continued funding sources, and second, the continued evidence of new sanitation efforts into the eighteenth century shows the failures of these efforts. Together these projects describe a distinctly pre-modern attempt at improving a city, but they do show the growing cultural significance of architecture in scholarly Rome.

The following chapters of Engineering the Eternal City show a more successful view of Roman construction. Still, the process by which the architect was selected for these projects represents a lack of modern professionalism within construction. Chapters three and four present both successes and failures in construction, but their true value is presenting how a designer was contracted. In the reconstruction of the Acqua Vergine, O. Long shows how the pope’s selection decided the person who would design the aqueduct. However, the primary sources used were unclear regarding how this architect was selected. Overall, these two chapters show how all major project members “were chosen in a process that was sometimes conflicted and often influenced by patronage considerations” (p. 112) and not based on the plan of the hired person.

The only place the book falters is in chapters 5 and 6, where O. Long shows the connection between printing, antiquarianism, and architecture within Rome. In these chapters, the book moves from describing architectural projects to detailing how architectural printing is an important part of Roman culture. These chapters use the example images of the city and the creation of maps of Rome to show the link between architecture, both past and present, to the culture of Rome. Although these chapters provide a clear connection between engineering and culture, they felt out of place when placed between chapters on creating major infrastructure projects and a detailed account of reforming the roads within the Eternal City. This is because these chapters did not detail the architecture but the perception of the architecture. This created a feeling that these chapters had a change in topic from the others, although they helped support the argument that building became part of Roman culture.

In the last two chapters, O. Long focuses on the reconstruction of roads and the importance of obelisks in rebuilding Rome. These chapters present the failure of the pope’s influence because although the pope wishes to clean the streets thoroughly, he cannot achieve his goals and must settle for a less extensive recreation of Rome. But these chapters present the full influence that reconstruction had since the movement of obelisks was a point of pride for Pope Paul III and became one of the most impressive engineering feats. Together these two chapters show the contentious nature of the politics of construction and the perceived benefits of these projects.

As a whole, Engineering the Eternal City provides a nuanced account of the factional nature of construction during the late 16^th century in Rome. It supports the main argument that when looked at closely, the construction projects within Rome do not yet resemble modern architectural projects, while these projects do engrain within Rome a culture of construction. Because of its quality and level of detail, Engineering the Eternal City is a book well-suited for historians, but because of its technicality, it may be a challenge for a more popular audience.