Author: Michelle Curtis

Review of Benjamin Wardhaugh’s Poor Robin’s Prophecies: A Curious Almanac, and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain

Benjamin Wardhaugh’s 2012 book, Poor Robin’s Prophecies: A Curious Almanac and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain (Poor Robin’s Prophecies), discusses the various roles math played in the lives of Britain between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Wardhaugh’s general argument is that mathematics in Georgian Britain was an empowering tool in the hands of the everyday Briton and that the same people also used mathematics as a recreational activity.  The author of Poor Robins’s Prophecies, Benjamin Wardhaugh, is a historian of mathematics who received his undergraduate from Trinity College, Cambridge, a master’s in music from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and his Ph.D. from Hertford College at Oxford.  Wardhaugh served as a Fellow of All Souls College from 2012 -2020.  He is currently based at Oxford, researching and writing.  Wardhaugh’s other research interests include the mathematical theories of music in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England.  Poor Robin’s Prophecies uses primary sources, including textbooks, handwritten exercise books, journals, and almanacs, to illustrate how everyday British people viewed and used mathematics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  Wardhaugh arranged his book topically and chronologically with a loose flow from chapter to chapter.  Prince Robin’s Prophecies: A Curious Almanac and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain by Benjamin Wardhaugh is an enjoyable, if disjointed, read about the history of mathematics and a long-lived influential almanac in Georgian Britain with a solid first half and a second half that is less engaging.

In Poor Robin’s Prophecies, Wardhaugh seeks answers to multiple historical lines of questioning, including how mathematical calculations and prediction can go wrong, how mathematics was taught and when the British learned it, what was used to teach it, and how Poor Robin himself can be a guide through the timeline of the book.  Wardhaugh’s loose argument for Poor Robin’s Prophecies is that Poor Robin represents how people in Georgian Britain viewed and learned math, and the almanac’s satirical take on life represents the fun that the British would eventually have with mathematics.  Poor Robin’s changing opinion of mathematics is meant to parallel that of the English people’s feelings regarding numbers.  Unfortunately, Wardhaugh’s success in using Poor Robin’s Almanac as a guide for the reader is not as effective as he hoped.  Passages about Poor Robin’s history are scattered throughout the book and often feel stuck in and disconnected from the rest of the text.  Poor Robin’s appearance in the second chapter of Poor Robin’s Prophecies is one of the almanac’s few appearances, which flows nicely with the rest of the text.   The chapter details how mathematical predictions and calculations can go wrong and how those mistakes affected the reputations of mathematicians and mathematics in Britain.  Wardhaugh does an excellent job weaving Poor Robin’s and other almanac’s suspicions about math into this chapter.

Poor Robin’s Prophecies chronicles the increase in the use of mathematics in everyday life and leisure of Georgian Britain, Wardhaugh begins by explaining the distrust Britain in the seventeenth century had of numbers and those who used them, then discusses how math was taught and whom, and how those who learned mathematics employed it in their daily lives.  While Wardhaugh explains the mathematical lives in Georgian Britain, he also attempts to draw parallels with a long-running almanac, Poor Robin’s Almanac, which ran under various authors from 1663 into the nineteenth century.

Chapters two, “The dismal and long expected morning: Getting it wrong,” and three, “Fitted to the meanest capacity: Learning it,” are the most successful at conveying Wardhaugh’s thesis.  In chapter three, Wardhaugh discusses the various methods children and adults use to learn mathematics.    Wardhaugh uses exercise books from several people to illustrate how much pride people took in the knowledge they gained.  Some books are carefully illustrated using multiple colors of ink and watercolors.  Ann Monhan Elcot’s exercise book showed usage in both her childhood and adulthood, indicating she refreshed her knowledge of mathematics using the book.  Ann believed the knowledge in her exercise book was so valuable that she passed it on to her daughter.  Wardhaugh touched on the differences in gender education and explained how mathematics was taught in schools and by tutors.  Poor Robin’s Prophecies includes sample problems throughout, but the problems in chapter three are primarily what an eleven-year-old worked on.  Wardhaugh explains how adults could begin or improve their arithmetic skills as well, using the Spittlefields Mathematical Society as an example.  Wardhaugh explains that the society was initially attended by tradesmen who wanted to improve their mathematical skills.  Although meetings were spent working on arithmetic problems, members were expected to share their knowledge with other members.  Wardhaugh does a thorough enough job covering his points in this chapter and makes it easy to follow.

Poor Robin’s Prophecies has an interesting premise, but the book does not flow well.  The sections on Poor Robin’s Almanac do not always fit in with the chapter’s content, leaving the reader confused about why the sections are there at all.  A book on Poor Robin’s Almanac and one on mathematics in Georgian Britain may have worked better.  That is not to say that the mathematical sections flow very well together.  It almost would have been better if the book was a series of essays instead of attempting continuity throughout.  Poor Robin’s Prophecies is a popular history book with some latitude in the lack of footnotes or end notes.  However, Wardhaugh’s “Notes of Sources” section is almost laughably brief, and his sources are not noted in the text.  This leaves readers who want to know more at a hefty disadvantage.   This book is an interesting introduction to the mathematics of Georgian Britain and gives insight into the lives of those who thought math was worth learning.  A list of secondary and primary sources would help those reading the book go further in their quest for mathematical historical knowledge.  Wardhaugh’s book was an interesting choice for a class on the Scientific Revolution, math is not an obvious fit until one realizes that almost all of the works read this semester have math as a base, but the two books that fit best are  Margaret Schotte’s Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550 – 1800 and Elaine Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England.  Schotte’s book covers the mathematical education needed to navigate a ship successfully, and Wardhaugh’s book briefly covers navigation and trigonometry.  Leong’s book discusses the recipe trade in early modern England.  Unsaid in her book are the mathematical skills needed to alter recipes by both men and women, a common practice at the time.  The trade in Leong’s book also connects with Wardhaugh’s book in that while recipes were traded in social networks, mathematical problems were also traded in the same period.  Wardhaugh’s book is best enjoyed by the curious non-specialist reader who wants to know more about the history of mathematics.  Benjamin Wardhaugh’s Poor Robin’s Prophecies: A Curious Almanac, and the everyday mathematics of Georgian Britain is an enjoyable but disjointed read for someone interested in the history of mathematics in Georgian Britain but is not looking to the book for a comprehensive list of further reading.

Elaine Leong’s 2018 book Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England (Recipes and Everyday Knowledge) is an illuminating look at recipes collected from multiple perspectives in early modern England.  Recipes and Everyday Knowledge demonstrates the household recipes that shaped social and family networking and managing a household and its member’s health.     Using impressive archival research, Leong shows the web of ways inhabitants of the early modern world understood their bodies and the natural world around them.  The author uses case studies to prove her thesis and analytical themes of gender and cultural history, as well as the history of medicine, science, and technology, to analyze her evidence.  Elaine Leong earned her Ph.D. in Modern History from Oxford in 2006 and received postdoctoral fellowships from the University of Warwick and Cambridge.  She specializes in early modern medicine and knowledge transfer.  Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England is a well-organized, fascinating look into multiple facets of early modern life in England using the surprising medium of recipe collecting.  The book is engaging for those interested in Early Modern England, the history of medicine and science, and the period’s social history.

Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England discuss how household recipe books allowed householders to produce different foods and medicine and how they understood their bodies and the natural world.  Using a large sample of manuscript and printed recipe collections, Leong’s argument allows for an in-depth study of household medicine, food production, and social circles established by recipe trading.  These categories lend themselves to gender and cultural analysis and delve into cultural history and the history of science and medicine.

Each chapter in Recipes and Everyday Knowledge has its argument that fits nicely into Leong’s central thesis.  While proving her chapter thesis, she neatly cites other historians’ work to support her research.   The first chapter of Recipes and Everyday Knowledge uses case studies of the Palmer and Bennet families to demonstrate an overview of recipe collecting, demonstrating that families used their social relationships to gather recipes for their collections.  In Chapter two, “Managing Health and Household from Afar,” Leong connects the systems of patronage and gift exchange with food production and medicine and argues that taking care of a household required more than curing the body.  The social and financial health of the household required looking after as well.  Both chapters one and two highlight the social aspects of recipe collecting that Leong mentions in her thesis.  Chapters three and four, “Collecting Recipes Step-by-Step” and “Recipe Trials in the Early Modern Household,” respectively, discuss trying and refining recipes on paper and through human trials.  These chapters use the social aspects of early modern life and examine the history of science and medicine as recipes go through human trials.  In chapter five, “Writing the Family Archive,” Recipes and Everyday Knowledge argues that recipes and recipe collections allow researchers to examine families’ social and economic history and that these collections were a part of family identity, helping to explain the large number that survives in archives.  In the closing chapter of Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, “Recipes for Sale: Intersections between Manuscript and Print Culture,” Leong analyses the differences between print and manuscript recipe collections and how they intersect.

Using a large sample of archival research and specific case studies, Recipes and Everyday Knowledge analyses the social, cultural, medical, and scientific ways recipes and recipe collecting were used by householders in Early modern England.  Leong uses not just the recipes themselves but the notations in the margins and family correspondence to show the social, economic, and scientific ways that recipes and recipe collecting shaped the lives of early modern English householders.  Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is bookended by chapters that focus on how families began and organized their collections and how manuscript and printed collections were malleable to additions and modifications.  Next, chapters two and five focus on the social aspect of collecting; chapter two focuses on household relationships, patronage, and gift-giving aspects; and chapter five discusses how family histories were recorded in recipe collections.  Finally, chapters three and four focus on the science and medicine aspect of the recipe collection.  They discuss recipe modification and trails, including when these recipes were tried, who was asked for advice and clarification regarding recipe instructions or modification, and whom the recipes were ultimately trialed.

Leong’s use of case studies to prove her point makes Recipes and Everyday Knowledge an engaging book.  Her inclusion of correspondence, particularly in chapter two, made the historical actors, their emotions, and family dramas come alive and illustrate her argument about the household’s social, physical and economic health and its members.   Recipes and Everyday Knowledge’s inclusion of gender analysis in Early Modern England is also a strength of the book.  Leong’s refusal to generalize gender roles in the home was refreshing as she points out that both male and female household members contribute to recipe collections when one would assume that since the women’s sphere is the household, women would be the contributor.   In chapter two, the brief passage about splitting the split in household duties in marriage was greatly appreciated.    The narrow focus of Leong’s book makes it an excellent contribution to research on early modern English households, medicine, and social interactions.  Recipes and Everyday Knowledge has connections to both The Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science by Alissa Rankin and Collecting the World: the Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane by James Delbourgo. Although Rankin’s book focus’ on Renaissance poison trials, particularly their documentation and their contribution to the evolution of science, the experimentation Leong documents in Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is similar, although the cases Leong documents are consensual, unlike Rankins.  In Collecting the World, Delbougo documents the patronage system Sloane uses to amass his collections, while in Recipes and Everyday Knowledge, Leong shows how recipe collecting was a part of the patronage system for both the top and bottom of the system.  Recipes and Everyday Knowledge is aimed at the specialist reader interested in Early Modern English medicine, social history, and science.   Elaine Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science and the Household in Early Modern England is a strong entry into Early Modern English medicine, social history, and the history of science; Leong’s case studies make the book enjoyable and informative.

Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane (Collecting the World) by James Delbourgo is a thoughtful and comprehensive biography of the man whose collections became the foundation of the British Museum, Hans Sloane.  Delbourgo’s central argument is that for Sloane, his collection practices were as much about collecting items as they were making connections with other collectors and valuable people, or as Delbourgo puts it, “collecting a world of things meant collecting a world of people.” James Delbourgo is the James Westfall Thompson Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University and received his Ph.D. from Columbia.  He specializes in the Early Modern Atlantic World and the History of Science.  His previous book, A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America, published in 2006, details American experimentation with electricity.   Delbourgo tells Sloane’s life story and legacy using Sloane’s correspondence, manuscripts, and published writings, also using Sloane’s surviving collections and catalogs.  Collecting the World highlights the themes of colonization, trade, and state in Sloane’s life, using them to paint a complete and accurate picture of a man the public could easily lionize without this contextualization.  Delbourgo’s detailed and contextualized portrayal of Sloane and his collection is not only an enjoyable read but an educational one that should be required reading for every historian of science and public historian as well as anyone with interests in British and museum History.

Collecting the World explores what collecting meant to Hans Sloane, not just the action of acquiring and cataloging but how he assembled, finessed, and his relationships with the people that would give and sell him the material goods that made up his collection.   Delbourgo expertly weaves the story of Sloane and his collection by building on the themes of colonialism, statehood, slavery, and trade, all of which Sloane exploited to his advantage when building his legacy.  Sloane’s relationships and interactions with people form the core of Collecting the World.  Even when collecting specimens in Jamacia Sloane’s treatment of the enslaved men and women there, Delbourgo gives detailed information pulled from Sloane’s journals, correspondence, and notes regarding his interactions and opinions of the people he interacted with, both enslaved and free.   The author highlights how Sloane’s opinions of people, mainly foreigners, and their customs impact how he recorded them in his collection.  However, it was not only Sloane’s opinions that affected the collection.   After Sloane’s death, parliament, out of fear, distrust, and disgust of the ‘commoner,’ does its best to prevent the lower classes from being admitted to the new British Museum.

Delbourgo splits Collecting the World into two parts.  In the first, he argues that Sloane’s childhood in Ulster taught him to make the kinds of connections he would use later in life to expand his collection early, and the reader sees him use these connections to travel to Jamacia and begin his connections.  In part two, Sloane uses his networking skills to rise in society and expand his collection.  Delbourgo also highlights how Sloane and his collection profited from slavery and British Imperialism throughout Collecting the World.  He discusses Sloane’s use of enslaved people in Jamacia to gather specimens, his marriage to his wife Elizabeth which brought him income from her plantations in Jamacia, and his interactions with the enslaved man Diallo are just some of the examples Delbourgo gives of Sloane profiting from slavery.

In Collecting the World, Delbourgo expertly conveys a nuanced, contextualized life story of Hans Sloane and the relationships he cultivated to form his collection of artifacts, manuscripts, and botanical and biological specimens worldwide.  In part one, Delbourgo details Sloane’s childhood in Ulster and the foundations of his medical practice as a young adult in London before spending the other two-thirds of this section discussing his trip to Jamacia and the beginnings of his collection.  In part two of Collecting the World, Sloane grows his practice, social standing, and collections in London alongside the Glorious Revolution and its ripples.  Chapters two and three of Collecting the World focus on Sloane’s experiences in Jamacia, emphasizing how he benefited from the labor and culture of the enslaved men and women there.  Particularly interesting in  Chapter two, entitled “Island of Curiosities,” are Sloane’s medical case studies in which he not only documents how he treated both free and enslaved peoples and what he treated them for but also includes his opinions of them colored by the scientific racism of the period.  Sloane was not a man prone to drink and found the culture of drinking on Jamacia disdainful; his advice to many of his patients to quit drinking for their health often went ignored, to their detriment and Sloane’s frustration.    Chapter seven, “Creating the Public’s Museum,” begins with Sloane’s death in 1753 at the age of ninety-two.  The chapter details the life of Sloane’s collections and the institution founded to hold them, The British Museum.  Sloane’s will stipulated that “museum or collection be … visited and seen by all persons desirous of seeing and viewing the same … [and] rendered as useful as possible, as well towards satisfying the desire of the curious, as for the improvement, knowledge, and information of all persons.” All persons was a confounding phrase for parliament and the staff of the British Museum, whose disdain, mistrust, and lack of understanding of the lower classes caused them to do as much as they could to keep the public’s access to the Museum to a minimum.

Collecting the World is a powerful biography of Hans Sloane, and Delbourgo’s inclusion of slavery, colonialism, and trade as analytical themes makes Sloane’s life, collection, and the relationships behind them much fuller.   His point that the British Museum and, therefore, Sloane’s collections are a lasting symbol of British Imperialism feels very poignant in relation to the call for the repatriation of artifacts to former colonial countries, a call the British Museum and its government has largely ignored.  Collecting the World is a detailed accounting of Hans Sloane’s life and collections and adds to the field of knowledge in numerous ways.  In addition to Sloane and his collections, Collecting the World gives detailed information on colonial Jamacia and its inhabitance, both enslaved and free, as well as its flora and fauna.  Delbourgo’s book is an enthralling read by both specialist and non-specialist readers, especially those interested in the history of science, Imperial Britain, and museum history.  Collecting the World: The Life and Curiosity of Hans Sloane is a well-written, enthralling read that contextualizes the life and collections of Hans Sloane that anyone interested in the history of science, Imperial Britain, or museums should read.

Alisha Rankin’s book Poison Trials: Wonder Drugs, Experiment, and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science (Poison Trials) is a fascinating journey through the evolution of Renaissance medicine and science focusing on the testing of poison antidotes by the ecclesiastical and secular nobility of Western Europe and the discovery and development of cure-all’s.  Rankin earned her Ph.D. from Harvard in the History of Science and studied at Trinity College in Cambridge before joining the history department at Tufts University. Rankin’s research interests include the History of Science and Medicine, Early Modern Europe, Women’s History, and the History of the Body and sexuality.    In Poison Trials, Rankin explains how medical experimentation was shaped by the contest for authority and rank among the nobility in sixteenth-century Europe. She does this by presenting three sub-arguments and supporting them with relevant and detailed case studies on poison trials (chapters 1-4) and the creation of cure-alls and panacea (chapters 5 and 6).  Overall, Poison Trials is an informative, enjoyable read that should be a welcome addition to any Historian of science or medicine’s collection.   

 In Poison Trials, Rankin explores how panaceas, experimentation, and notions of medical authority were affected by poison and antidote testing in sixteenth-century Europe.  Following this idea, Poison Trials delved deeper into the subject by splitting the book into three sections, each exploring two case studies focusing on that section’s argument.  The first part, “Authorities,” sheds light on the history of poison trials and explores the social and political reasons for holding them.  Part two, “Experiments,” looks at the peak of poison trials in the sixteenth century, including the careful procedural dance done by political advisors to make the trials acceptable to the public, and part three, “Wonder Drugs,” is a fascinating look into how poison antidotes made way for the discovery and production of cure-alls and panaceas.  These arguments, arranged chronologically, highlight each of the sections of her thesis and go in-depth into them.  Each section analyzes a relevant case study using the historical analysis from the previous section in a stepping-stone fashion.   In her conclusion, Rankin demonstrates how the procedures developed for poison trials continued to influence scientific experimentation in the late seventeenth century.

Poison Trials examines the influence of sixteenth-century antidote trials and panaceas over scientific and cultural medical experimentation.  The antidote trials performed on human and animal subjects and the observations made by the physicians who ran them contrast the testimonials hawkers of “empirics” used as proof their cures worked.  Physicians who took part in these trials viewed their methods as far superior to the uneducated practitioners who went from town to town selling these untested remedies.   Rankin posits that the evolution of documenting these trials and the moral questions surrounding the trials were crucial in setting the course for medical experimentation in the seventeenth century.  Rankin discussed the difficulty in testing drugs since everyone’s humoral balance was different physicians had to formulate drugs for each person. These difficulties did not exist when dealing with poisons as they affected everyone the same way, bypassing the humors.  This difference allowed poison trials to take place with concrete results.

The records of these poison trials contained excruciating detail of the experience of those who were ingesting the poison and the antidote.  Physicians believed that these records legitimized the tests.   Chapter four of Poison Trials details the 1580 poison trial undertaken by condemned thief Wendel Tumler.   Count Wolfgang II of Hohenlohe, known for his interest in the natural world and alchemy, called the trial. Wolfgang’s counselors took great pains to ensure that everything above the trial appeared above board so as not to agitate the public. Rankin’s analysis of the situation gives the reader a view into beliefs about death, what constitutes a good death, and the public’s role in executions.  This inclusion of societal norms and the concern nobles had concerning keeping the general public happy may seem out of place, but those concerns influenced how physicians tested these antidotes and drugs.

Poison Trials is a strong entry into the academic literature of the History of Science. The book uses primary sources to demonstrate how poison trials influenced the course of medical and scientific experimentation. Rankin’s case studies strengthen her thesis and are engaging and well-written.  The personal and background details Rankin included about her subjects make the book engaging, and the images are on point and add to the book’s value. However, if it has one, Poison Trial’s weak point is Rankin’s attempt to connect sixteenth-century poison trials with the COVID pandemic.  When Rankin was writing the book in the spring of 2020, things were very uncertain, but today, that feeling of uncertainty does not connect anymore.  Rankin’s extensive research on sixteenth-century poison trials, a subject she states has been overlooked in the history of science, adds depth to the field of medical history and gives a window into the moral and social pressures physicians faced when running poison trials.   Although Poison Trials takes place in the sixteenth century, its argument and the way the book shows the progression of experimentation throughout the Renaissance means it fits perfectly with the material for a class on the scientific revolution.  Rankin intended her monograph for a specialist audience, but a knowledgeable general reader would also find it enjoyable.

Poison Trials is an enjoyable, informative read that proves its argument but also makes the reader want to know more about the cure-alls of sixteenth-century Europe.  Rankin also briefly discusses the role of women in medicine in the medieval and Renaissance. While this section does not add to the book’s overall evidence, it piques the reader’s interest.  The explanation of ancient poison trials and their influence on Renaissance physicians added context and background to her argument.  Rankin’s section on wonder drugs and those practitioners who sold them fit well into the book and inspired this review to dig into the subject deeper.  The Poison Trials:  Wonder Drugs, Experiment and the Battle for Authority in Renaissance Science by Alisha Rankin is well researched, well written, informative, and enjoyable to read and is recommended for historians of science and medicine as well as the informed general reader.