Book Reviews

Sailing School: Navigating Science and Skill, 1550-1800 by Margaret E. Schotte is a piece of history that documents the methodological tools of sea navigation during the mid sixteenth century until the beginnings of the nineteenth century. The book touches on several different events that triggered a stark development that occurred during this time in this profession. Some of these include the development of the printing press, the development of the nautical expert, and the development of different nautical theories that saw the subsequent battle between sailors that believed in learning to sail from books in classrooms and those that believed in learning from hands on experience. She touches on print culture, the scientific revolution, and the histories of six different countries. I believe this to be a good contribution to the history of science and historical intellectual and methodological thought.

Margaret Schotte is an associate history professor at York University. She received her BA from Harvard University, her MA from the University of Toronto, and she has an MA and PhD in history from Princeton University. Her research interests include early modern science, book history, maritime history, and digital humanities. She has been published in a variety of journals, some ranging from intellectual history to cultural history, and she has had two book chapters published. Sailing School is her first published monograph and she is currently working on a project related to Sailing with the French: Labour, Trade, and Mobility in the Indian Ocean World. Sailing School has received the 2019 John Lyman Book Award from the North American Society for Oceanic History, the 2020 Leo Gershoy Award from the American Historical Association, and the 2021 LA&PS Dean’s Award for Distinction in Research https://profiles.laps.yorku.ca/profiles/mschotte/.

Chapter 1 of Sailing School starts the book by examining Amsterdam’s harbor in the seventeenth century. It goes over how new methods of teaching nautical skills were developing. With the invention of the printing press, teaching navigation by memory and hands on training was starting to be challenged by purely learning by theory in a classroom. Textbooks started to be developed bt teachers to illustrate their expertise. This chapter highlights the different areas of focus that different teachers would have, whether that be spending more time on astronomy, mathematics, or how to calculate tides.

Chapter 2 focused in on the mathematics of navigation and what was taught and who taught them. Navigators needed to be absolutely proficient in math and the next major development of calculating ship positions was trigonometry and logarithms. These mathematical tools helped sailors determine where their ships were in relation to other land masses. Some of the teachers of these techniques that are pointed out by Schotte include Denys, Dieppe, and Jean-Francois Doublet. Towards the end of the chapter the book documents how legislation stepped in to solidify the transition into theoretical classroom-based learning by requiring future navigators to take classes.

Chapter 3 turns to the state of naval navigation training in England. It explains how students were required to answer questions that were on the one hand theoretical, and other sets of questions that were very hands on. They would all have to face a panel of nautical experts before they could get their credentials. The chapter runs through a series of anecdotes of different experiences of young aspiring navigators and highlights the deficiencies and advantages of different curricula. It finally argues that it was the development of in classroom hands on learning that created a new space for developing mathematical minds.

Chapter 4 continues the ongoing debates of the optimum use of theory it nautical navigation training. It takes a look at different Dutch textbooks and curricula, comparing and contrasting them and their developments. It documents the classrooms that were contained by the small private schools that were used to educate these students. It outlines how they would use realistic word problems to improve their trigonometry skills and how teachers incorporated old, as well as new methods of teaching. It goes over the role that exams played in proving to the teachers that the students knew how to manage daily calculation problems.

Chapter 5 shows just how much of the nautical profession changed over the course of the eighteenth century. “Over the course of the eighteenth century a great deal had changed for sailors, including new instruments, revised techniques for solving classic problems, and updated institutions and forms of certification,” (Page 152). There were a variety of changes due to the changing political landscape of Europe at the time. Some of these involved the French and American revolutions, respectively.

Margaret Schotte’s pros are easily understandable, and her arguments appear to be quite clear. This does not seem to be a popular history, as I do not believe most average readers are interested in 18^th century nautical history, however I could be mistaken. It seems that the audience is primarily for academics and historians interested in the history of thought and science. Schotte provides a robust understanding of the scientific developments at hand and lays them out in a way that is chronological and she provides anecdotes that detail the developments in a concrete way. She does a good job of documenting her sources throughout the book. Between her paragraphs of in-depth explanation, she provides images of textbooks and nautical sources. These may be in different languages than she is speaking in but they provide good accompaniments to her commentary. She provides the mathematical formulas used first hand by the students and teachers of sailing.

Overall, Sailing School can be classified as a history of science book. I would argue that it certainly has social, cultural, and political elements, but it is primarily a history of methodological progress. It documents the processes of learning and what it meant to be a navigational sailor and the other subjects are backdrops to these developments. It talks about the development of the role of mathematics, the evolution of the textbook, and the role of hands-on versus theoretical learning. I think it could also be argued that it may be an intellectual history, albeit in the pursuit of scientific progress. Sailing School is a solid contribution to the history of scientific development in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

The Courtiers’ Anatomists: Animals and Humans in Louis XIV’s Paris is a book that describes the early modern development of the science of anatomy in France. I found the book to be so interesting that I could not stop myself from going a few hundred words over the limit for this assignment. Instead of just summarizing the book, I am going to keep this review focused by addressing two goals that the author, Anita Guerrini, gives herself in her introduction. On page 14, she writes that 1) she wants to explore the role that the dissection of animals and humans had for the study of anatomy, and 2) she wants to add complexity to the historical discussion of ideas, events, and practices of that time. After an introduction to her and brief reviews of all six chapters of her book, I will ask if she achieved her goals. To end this essay, I will critique comments she makes in her introduction about the role of animals in historical narratives. Typically, historians concern themselves with human agency and the environment in which humans live, but Anita Guerrini is the first historian I have read who discusses the agency of animals – more specifically, non-human animals – so I do not want to miss the opportunity here to consider her perspective.

According to professor Guerrini’s homepage, https://anitaguerrini.com/, she is a retired professor of the history of science and medicine at Oregon State University. Before that, she taught history and environmental studies at the University of California and was a visiting professor in 2013 at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. She was educated at Connecticut College, Oxford University, and received her PhD from Indiana University. Her accolades for The Courtiers’ Anatomists include the Pfizer Prize for best scholarly book in the history of science and a nomination for the American Library in Paris Book Prize. Professor Guerrini also held fellowships to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, the Descartes Centre at the University of Utrecht, and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France.

Professor Guerrini’s homepage, is a good resource for readers who are curious about how her scholarly and personal interests relate to The Courtiers’ Anatomists. She gives a sense of her interest in French culture when she writes in her About section, “I’m happiest sitting in a café or somewhere outdoors filling the pages of a Clairefontaine notebook (I buy them in bulk whenever I’m in France; they’re small, cheap, and colorful).” I imagine her favorite cafés are in Paris. She lists her research interests as ranging from the 16th to the 20th centuries and including anatomy, the history of animals, natural history, the environment, and the history of food.

Broadly speaking, the six chapters of The Courtiers’ Anatomists move chronologically through the development of anatomical science in early modern Paris. In chapter one, professor Guerrini discusses the early modern era’s interest “medical humanism,” which refers to a reevaluation of medical and biological texts from ancient writers, such as Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates. She also describes the practical details of science at that time, including how salons, academies, and networks of correspondence influenced early proponents of dissection.

Because The Courtiers’ Anatomists focuses on Paris, it is worthwhile taking a moment to consider how the author justifies her geographical interest. On page 14, she presents her case: “Why Paris? In the seventeenth century, Paris was the most populous city in Europe and Louis XIV the most powerful monarch. As a center of cultural production, Paris contributed to the birth of many of the cultural markers of modernity . . . as well as science. Yet, compared to London, seventeenth century Paris has been much less explored as a site of science . . ..” What the author is doing, then, by contrasting science in Paris with science in London, is highlighting the importance of geography to the history of science. As easy as it is to focus only on theories and ideas, it is important in the history of science to understand the context in which theories and ideas develop. The quote above is a reminder for readers of the importance of geographical context.

Chapter two gives readers an introduction to the major scientific questions that preoccupied the Parisian early scientific community. The author mentions attempts to reconcile newly discovered plants and animals from the Americas into the existing world view of Europeans. As well, she mentions specific scientific challenges of the day, such as understanding and explaining the circulation of blood and the possibility of vacuums in nature. She also describes how the Parisian scientific community incorporated new tools, such as telescopes, maps, globes, skeletons, and dissection, into their research.

Before moving to chapter three, it is worth pausing again to consider how professor Guerrini complicates the theoretical background of science in chapter two. In particular, she discusses ideas different people had about how experimentation should work. On page 67, she writes that in early modern France, the idea of experimentation was in flux. People understood it in different ways. She mentions how Francis Bacon, for instance, advocated using an inductive method for “forcing nature to reveal her secrets,” while Robert Boyle emphasized how experimentation can predict results. This is a good example, then, of how Guerrini meets her second goal, which is to add complexity to the historical discussion.

Chapters three and four are less focused on theory than earlier sections of The Courtiers’ Anatomists. Chapter three covers institutions, discoveries, and changes in publication standards and describes how anatomists found bodies with which they could study and practice dissections. Chapter four discusses new kinds of exotic animals to which anatomists gained access, new methods people developed for dissections, and different perspectives regarding how to categorize animals.

The last two chapters focus on the later careers of two important anatomists and bring the narrative of the book to an end. Chapter five discusses the careers of Charles Perrault and Joseph-Guichard Duverney. It summarizes important theoretical disagreements they had, including over the nature of matter, sensation, and the possible causes behind the life and motion in animals. Chapter six brings new anatomists into the story and discusses how their interests changed their community. The story comes to an end with the death of Charles Perrault and Joseph-Guichard Duverney moving on to other projects outside of anatomy.

Before concluding this essay, it is worth one last pause to mention Professor Guerrini’s comments in chapter six about spectacle in anatomical science. She mentions it in sections two and three, where she describes how, under order of a royal decree, anatomists began to offer free lectures to the public. In those lectures, they discussed anatomy, mixed in stories about rich and famous individuals who had been autopsied, and, most surprisingly to me, used corpses. Joseph-Guichard Duverney was the most talented of these anatomist-lecturers. His audiences came to include, as Guerrini puts it on page 227, “medical and surgical students, natural philosophers, fashionable members of the court, and whoever else wished to drop by.” Perhaps surprisingly, this led to chaos: there was “foot stamping and rock throwing,” riots, complaints about riots, rules against wearing batons and swords, and the corruption of local guards.

Professor Guerrini’s fascinating peek into the spectacle that anatomical science and dissections inspired will probably be a surprise for her readers who assume that science only happens at the level of theory and only in labs and universities away from the general public. As sensational as the public dissections and lectures in Paris were, they played a role in disseminating knowledge. Guerrini points out on page 239 that the public lectures, “were staged performances intended not to discover new things about the body but to demonstrate what was known.” The public had the opportunity, therefore, to learn about anatomical science. Likewise, Guerrini’s comments remind her readers that spectacle and the patronage that made public lectures and demonstrations possible played a role in the development of science. This is another example of how science is more than theory and of how the author, once again, meets her second goal by adding complexity to the historical discussion.

To conclude this review, there is the question of Professor Guerrini’s goals and the issue of non-human animals in history. Each chapter addresses the first goal, which is to explore the role that dissection had for the study of anatomy. Chapters one, five, and six do this by focusing on individuals and institutions that used dissection in early modern Paris for scientific purposes. Chapters two, three, and four address how anatomists contextualized dissection through debates and developments in theory.

The second goal is to add complexity to the historical discussion. I have already mentioned a few ways the author does this in my comments above. However, my favorite is when she presents different sides of theoretical debates in an evenhanded way. While reading her book, I never had the sense that she wanted me to agree with one side or another on scientific issues, for example, over different views on mechanism or how sensation works. It would be easy to downplay or disregard one party over another with the benefit of modern science, but Guerrini does not do that. For that reason alone, I would argue that the author successfully meets her second goal.

The final part of this review reflects on Anita Guerrini’s comments in her introduction about non-human animals in historical scholarship. On page 15, she writes, “[b]y placing animals at the center of my study, I document and acknowledge the enormous role they played in the birth of the experimental method as well as in natural history and the reconfiguration of the human and animal body.” While non-human animals are an important part of her history of anatomy and dissection, they were passive participants. For example, in the numerous places where she discusses the dissection of exotic animals, her descriptions do not depict them as having any influence over their fates. Instead, she focuses on challenges anatomists faced. Anatomists struggled with finding available animals, say, from the king’s court, and with limited time before decay ruined their specimens.

The argument here is not that professor Guerrini’s mistake is making non-human animals passive participants in her book. The point of her book is to discuss anatomists in Paris, and, in such a situation, the non-human animals on which they did their experiments had no agency. Instead, the issue is that the author does not make non-human animals the center of her study, as she claims. She discusses them throughout her book, but her main attention goes to the anatomists, their debates, and the political situation in which they lived. The Courtiers’ Anatomists is an excellent book that is worth reading and deserves the awards it won. However, it makes me want to find historical writing that brings non-human animals into the center of the story, much like the Annales school brings the environment into the center and E. P. Thompson brings the working class into the center. Maybe I should read one of those “animal studies” Anita Guerrini mentions in the notes to her introduction.

Anita Guerrini is a historian of science and medicineat Oregon State University, where she holds the history department’s emeritus chair. She recieved her PhD from Indiana University in History and Philosophy of Science and has produced and collaborated on numerous works concerning the history of science. Her 2015 work, The Courtiers’ Anatomists, was awarded the Pfizer Prize in 2018.  She is currently researching the history of the human skeleton and the role of science in early modern European nationalism.

The Courtiers’ Anatomists concerns the intersection between animal dissection and vivisection and the developing experimental method in Paris from 1645 to 1715. Guerrini’s work explores the dissection efforts of academicians at the Academy of Sciences in Paris, in the process showing how anatomy and dissection were influenced by and a part of natural history in the 17th century. In particular, The Courtiers’ Anatomists highlights the vague distinction between ancients and modern in regards to scientific practice, showing how Parisian academicians straddled the worlds of ancient knowledge and groundbreaking anatomical discovery as they strove to learn the innerworkings of the human body and soul through the dissection and vivisection of common and exotic animals supplied from the menageries of the Sun King himself.

Guerrini organizes her 6 chapters chronologically, as she takes us from the fragmented dissection practices of surgeons, physicians, and anatomists in the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 17th century, chronicling the rise of a royal institution dedicated to modern discovery and intimately situated in the cultural milieu of Parisian and courtly society. Chapter one introduces the reader to the anatomy scene in Paris in the early 17th century, particularly the thriving body economy. This chapter discusses the various places where anatomy and discussions regarding natural philosophy took place; from the salons and conferences of notable participants in the Republic of letters, to the Hotel Dieu and church of Saint-Come. In the early 17th century, various professions practiced anatomy for a multitude of reasons as they sought to break from what they believed to be the overly rigid philosophy of scholasticism.

Chapter two concerns the discourse in Paris surrounding William Harvey’s De Motu Cordis, and the overall break from ancient knowledge that anatomy and the new science of the 17th century was revealing. Guerrini consistently argues in this chapter that the dissection and vivisection that these courtiers performed merged with the descriptive-based method of natural history to form a new comparative anatomy, which combined natural history and anatomy and broke from scholasticism in the belief that historia was a better method for ascertaining cause than sciencia. Indeed, the founders of the Academy of sciences such as Jean Pecquet and Claude Perrault actively discouraged experimentation for reasons of sciencia and thought the enterprise of anatomy necessitated the treatment of animal subject or cadaver as purely individualistc, in the process foregoing the natural historians penchant for classification.

Chapter three of The Courtiers’ Anatomists concerns the early animal dissection and vivisection performed by the Academy and the conservative modernism and anti-cartesian positions adopted by the academy as they practiced their anatomy to further their own institutional beliefs and glorify their patron Louis XIV. Perrault features heavily in this chapter, as he develops his own theory that simultaneously countered and complemented Descartes mechanical philosophy and added to the widespread discourse about the nature of the soul. As Guerrini indicates, discourse abounded throughout the continent in the 17th century over the issue of animal souls, did they have them, where was the soul located, and could animals reason in manner akin (but never equal to) human beings. This chapter also briefly explores the self-imposed difficulties that the mid-century Academy endured regarding the printing of their findings. Much unlike the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions, the Parisian Academy initially only published collectively, which inevitably begs the question of provenance in the history of science, though this is not discussed by Guerrini.

Chapter four explores the exotic dissections and vivisections performed by anatomists at the Academy, made possible by their royal patron Louis XIV, and published in their notable work, Histoire des Animaux. This chapter explores the benefits enjoyed by the Academy, especially in regards to the availability of exotic animals thanks to their access to the royal menageries at Versailles and other royal estates. The portrayal of new knowledge was very important to the compagnie, as Guerrini describes: “but the compagnie also self-consciously aspired to make and display new knowledge of these animals gained from direct observation and careful dissection…” Histoire des Aniumaux indicates the self-scrutiny and importance the academicians poured into their anatomical practices, as well as the deference for experimentation rather than ancient reasoning, simultaneously ascribing to modern anatomy a certain moral economy that was lost on the ancient anatomy practiced by Galen and Aristotle.

Chapter 5 discusses the influence of court, royal menageries, and Louis XIV influence on Academy experimentation. Many of the exotic animals dissected by the anatomists at the academy were acquired from the menagerie at Versailles, such as Lions, Chameleons, and even an elephant. Guerrini explores the symbiotic relationship between Academy and royal patron, asserting that the dissections of the exotic and the findings of the Academy served to bolster the prestige and power of Louis XIV. This would have been an excellent chapter to discuss the relationship between science and state in the early modern period, but Guerrini does not broach this subject as much as some readers would like, instead positing Louis XIV patronage of science and culture as a means of acquiring continental recognition as a modern Alexander the great. However, Guerrini does describe in great detail how anatomists access to exotic animals helped dispel some ancient knowledge and how royal patronage allowed academicians the opportunity to tackle some of the most resounding anatomical questions of the 17th century such as vision and respiration.

Chapter 6 introduces the reader to the dissemination of anatomical experimentation through lectures, particularly those performed by Joseph-Guichard Duverney. This chapter is somewhat unique in Guerrini’s work because she explores the aspect of anatomy as a performace, positing that renowned figures such as Duverney, who was something of a Parisian rockstar, used the public dissection or vivisection as a method for disseminating their own experimentation. Culture under the Sun King was very much in vogue, far beyond fashion, courtiers were encouraged to make use of all aspects of the Sun King’s knowledge and benevolence, and this included the lectures and performances given by academicians.

Guerrini’s The Courtiers’ Anatomists does a remarkable job of exploring the coming of age of anatomy, dissection and vivisection in the early modern period. Her sources typically come from the anatomists themselves, in the form of correspondence and published folios which she combines to show the reader the entirety of the 17th century anatomical process from acquisition of a cadaver or diseased animal to the publication or performance of anatomical experimentation. Guerrini clearly demonstrates an intimate understanding of the science she writes about, and this comes through in her examples which illustrate dissection, vivisection, and comparative anatomy as a quintessentially humanistic endeavor.

While Guerrini’s knowledge is to be praised, her writing style could stand to learn from Duverney. While ostensibly for a popular audience, though one perhaps a bit more literate in early modern science, the excruciating detail by which she presents comparative anatomy and dissection at the Academy serves to diminish her overall arguments at several instances. If this was a monograph then these issues would be moot, but the introduction of historical figures numerous times is portrayed as vital to the narrative, but actually serve merely as evidence. While the overall structure of the book proceeds chronologically, there is an abundance of hopping from Perault, Pecquet, Duverney, etc., so much so that Guerrini risks losing her readership in the mountain of evidence she presents.

Regarding HIST 635, The Courtiers’ Anatomists is perhaps the most meticulously written work we have read so far for the class. It does much to broaden our understanding of the influence of humanism on early modern science, and also expands our understanding of what exactly comprised natural history during this era. Also, the distinction she illustrates between historia and sciencia is perhaps the best description of these new scientists belief in their new forms of experimentation. It was interesting to see anatomists such as Perrault rally against scholasticism while adopting a method of fact employed by the scholastics. In addition, the self-imposed restrictions by the Academy on the publications of their findings reinforce the importance of print culture to class discussions.

Overall, Anita Guerrini’s The Courtier’s Anatomists is thoroughly well researched and meticulous exploration of the importance of animals in the development of experimentation. In particular, the widespread practice of dissection and vivisection, as shown in the book, elucidate the widespread belief during this era of the importance of the development of new knowledge.

Anita Guerrini’s The Courtiers’ Anatomists is a well-written text that pulls its readers into the intersection of animal and human dissection and vivisection in the context Louis XIV’s Paris. The central theme is that of dissection and experimental methods employed by the courtiers’ anatomists. Dr. Guerrini obtained her Ph.D. from Indiana University, specializing in the history and philosophy of science. Some of her works include “Duverney’s Skeletons,” “The King’s Animals and the King’s Books: The Illustrations for the Paris Academy’s Histoire des animaux,” and Experimenting with Humans and Animals from Aristotle to CRISPR. For The Courtiers’ Anatomists, Dr. Guerrini was awarded the Pfizer Prize in 2018. Guerrini’s writing style in The Courtiers’ Anatomists merges history and philosophy with science, creating a space where the focus is on the accomplishments of the anatomists rather than on the rule of Louis XIV.

The Courtiers’ Anatomists is succinctly laid out, with an introduction, chapters with headings and subheadings, a conclusion, and an epilogue. The introduction lays the groundwork for later chapters in the book. It is clear and concise in terms of what the book is about and where it is positioned in history. The themes of dissection and vivisection of animals, as well as the intersection of anatomy and natural history, are introduced, as they are prominent throughout the book. Chapter One begins with Guerrini painting a lurid picture of how corpses were exhumed for dissection by “resurrection men” employed by the prominent anatomists of the day. Corpses were a commodity, as medical students, surgeons, and anatomists all needed a fresh supply. One must also understand the historical context of Paris at the time, as the anatomists also obtained living specimens from the streets, typically stray dogs. As the author transitions to Chapter Two, the discovery of the circulation of the blood by William Harvey in the 1620s and the discovery of so-called “lacteal veins” by a Milanese doctor named Aselli take center stage. Aselli believed that these veins ended at the liver, where, according to the Galenic view prevalent in medicine at the time, blood was generated. Thomas Bartholin, an early French anatomist, concluded that these “lacteal veins” were part of the lymphatic system. Chapter Three explores the anatomical projects and the primary anatomists of the Paris Academy. It opens with a foray into blood transfusion, which was done on dogs through vivisection and was ultimately unsuccessful. The fact that the body would attack the wrong kind of transfused blood, something modern medicine takes for granted, was unknown in the seventeenth century. Guerrini surfaces a counternarrative of the ongoing philosophical debates surrounding animals. Descartes believed that animals were like machines, driven only by instinct. Humans, however, were believed to be free actors, shaping their own destinies. Emotion was believed to be uniquely human, as was the afterlife. In sharp contrast to Descartes’ view, Marin Cureau de la Chambre, a Parisian anatomist, broke with centuries of tradition by stating that the ability to feel pain was a conscious act. He believed that animals had souls, emotions, and the ability to choose between good and evil. In Chapter Four, the reader is introduced to the first “exotic” dissections at the Academy, with the king’s menagerie as a source of “exotic” animals. It also brings up the publication of the Histoire des animaux, an illustrated atlas of animals from around the world. Chapter Five continues the thread of exotic dissections, bringing in the royal menagerie from which the anatomists obtained their specimens. The anatomists were given a chameleon to experiment on, and they shattered several longstanding beliefs about the species. When they wrapped the chameleon in a tablecloth, it became pale but not white, showing that chameleons do not change color automatically. In Chapter Six, the focus is on how Duverney lectured at the Jardin du Roi to paying audiences, often conducting vivisections or dissections in front of court ladies and city financiers. In 1694, Claude Perrault’s brother Charles published his interpretations of classic fairy tales, some of which later inspired Disney movies, such as his retelling of Cinderella. In that story, the interchangeable nature of humans and animals was in direct parallel to what was going on in the anatomists’ lectures. Animals stood in for humans as test subjects, as exhuming human remains was fraught with cultural issues. However, Perrault’s fairy tales also had a cruel undertone: his retelling of Little Red Riding Hood had the wolf eat both the girl and her grandmother. Duverney and the other anatomists knew that the animals they were experimenting on were in pain, but that did not hinder their quest for knowledge. As the author transitions to the conclusion, she points out that the Paris Academy was dependent on the goodwill of the crown. When Louis XIV lost interest in the anatomists’ project, he terminated the supply of animals from the royal menagerie. The epilogue deals with the legacy of the Histoire des animaux in the eighteenth century. Guerrini states that the Histoire des animaux occupies a place in history between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

The author is explicit in her introduction about the goals of her book. Guerrini’s primary themes are the anatomists, animals and natural history, and the interrelationship of dissection, vivisection, experience, and experiment. When focusing on the anatomists, Guerrini relates their role to that of the courtiers and the monarchy. The anatomists were dependent on royal funds, and the whims of the king often terminated projects, such as the menagerie dissections. Guerrini relates an anecdote about a time when the patronage of Louis XIV’s advisor Colbert meant that cats were unable to be experimented on, as Colbert was an avid cat fancier. Patronage was a palpable exertion of royal power. Guerrini also writes about dissection’s role as a form of seventeenth-century innovation. Dissection was at the forefront of seventeenth-century medical knowledge, showing doctors what the inside of the body looked like long before X-rays and ultrasound technology. However, dissection did nothing to quell the popularity of bloodletting, which was still seen as beneficial well into the nineteenth century. The theme of animals and natural history is another major part of the narrative. Anatomy and natural history intersected in many ways in the seventeenth century, and the Histoire des animaux depicted animals both in life and in dissected form. The book showed how the dissection of animals sparked an interest in natural history amongst scientists of the time period, as can be seen in the epilogue. The dichotomies of dissection and vivisection, experience and experiment, are also prominent in The Courtiers’ Anatomists. The educated public paid to see these dissections and vivisections, which were often accompanied by the lectures of the anatomists themselves. The curiosity of both the anatomists and the educated public was fueled by a deep-seated desire to know everything about the world around them.

The Courtiers’ Anatomists was a thorough and thoughtful account of a lesser-known chapter in scientific history, which could appeal both to historians and to individuals in the medical field. I would recommend this book to historians seeking a deeper understanding of the world of Louis XIV and how science played into the Age of Absolutism. From a different perspective, I would recommend this book to those in the medical field who want to explore how the dissections and vivisections of this time period paved the way for modern medicine.

Londa Schiebringer is the John L. Professor of the History of Science at Stanford University, and is a leading international authority on gender and science. Her work centers around the history of women’s participation in science; gender in the structure of scientific institutions; and the gendering of human knowledge. Her 2004 work, Plants and Empire: Colonial Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, focuses on agnotology surrounding 17th and 18th century colonial abortifacients. Her work argues that colonial abortifacients were deliberately kept out of 17th and 18th century European pharmacopeia, physician discourse, and taxonomic definitions  due in part because of the gendered roles of medicine and the colonial enterprise, but also because mercantilist states actively sought a role in determining colonial and domestic populations. Much of Schiebringer’s work focuses on the willing ignorance of colonial botanists and physicians such as Hans Sloane, who discredited indigenous and enslaved medicinal practices, and the abortifacient knowledge of indigenous and enslaved people, arguing in the process that the medical knowledge tradition in indigenous Caribbean communities and enslaved communities suffered through the early modern period with their knowledge intact.

While Schiebringer’s work is not so monographically fixated as to deter a popular audience, the structure of her arguments necessitates a small understanding of 17th and 18th scientific discourse and gender beliefs in European and colonial societies. Though without previous knowledge, the work is written in an accessible manner, and touches on postcolonial theory enough to intrigue the historian, and leave the general reader undisturbed.

The structure of Plants and Empire stems from the tracing of medical and cultural knowledge about the peacock flower (flos pavonis) after it was discovered by Maria Sibylla Merian in Surinam and classified by her as an indigenous abortifacient. The book flows spatially, following the development of the peacock flower in European and colonial bodies of knowledge. Each chapter bounces from the colonial botanical enterprise to the royal gardens and societies of Europe, in the process showing how transatlantic knowledge, or transatlantic agnotology, was part of larger scientific, mercantilist, and social, transatlantic power negotiation between states and scientists alike.

Chapter one introduces the reader to the variety of practicing botanists in the colonial Atlantic. From Voyaging botanists such as Hans Sloane and Maria Merian, the unnamed and underappreciated indigenous and enslaved botanical assistants, the European armchair botanists such as Linnaeus, and even the “Biopirates”, Schiebringer shows how botany was both a state and scientific enterprise. Chapter two explores bioprospecting, and the diffusion of colonial, European, enslaved, and indigenous cultures that resulted from botanists work in the colonial field. This chapter also portrays some colonial botany as a collaborative endeavor between cultures rather than part of a larger colonial extraction economy. Chapters one and two, while written with excellent prose and contain interesting historical information, are clearly designed to immerse the general reader in the transatlantic world. The following three chapters will be of most interest to any historians of science and/or gender.

Chapter three introduces the moral economy surrounding discussions of abortion and abortifacients in the transatlantic world. It not only discusses cultural changes in Europe surrounding midwifery and abortion, but also examines changes in indigenous and enslaved medical culture and abortion knowledge. Much like the debates surrounding “ensoulment” in Europe during the early colonial era, chapter three is where Schiebringer’s work is “ensouled” with the most postcolonial theory; Schiebringer goes to great length to defend and highlight the abortion practices and medical knowledge of indigenous and enslaved cultures in this chapter, and despite the limited material available to her (read sources), she does an excellent job reinvigorating the medical traditions of colonized peoples.

Chapter four brings us back to the peacock flower and its reception and taxonomic processes the abortifacient was put through in Europe. This chapter also deals with the processes of knowledge transfer in the colonial transatlantic, and the place of abortifacients and emmenagogues in 18th century European pharmacopeia. In particular, this chapter is noteworthy for showing how traditional European knowledge of abortifacients was pushed aside in the 18th century as experimentation under state purview coincided with abortion becoming illegal in many western European countries; As Schiebringer says, “As research on drug mechanisms, effects, and reactions increased, certain undesirable drugs were pushed aside,” (193). Chapter 5 takes a deep dive into the rather fiery discourse surrounding botanical nomenclature in the 18th century, showing in addition how a certain linguistic imperialism practiced by European botanists such as Linnaeus (whom Schiebringer barely attempts to hide her distaste for) subverted indigenous and enslaved peoples knowledge systems by imposing Latin and Greek nomenclature.

Schiebringer’s work is a nice change of pace for a history of science historiography that too often seeks to write about male scientists while only given cursory acknowledgment to female practitioners during the 17th and 18th centuries. In defense of other historians, historic material surrounding these historic phenomena overwhelmingly favors the male perspective; it is credit to Schiebringer that she dove into scant sources surrounding indigenous and enslaved medical knowledge traditions and was able to produce a work that highlights the agency of colonized peoples within the era of the “scientific revolution”. The sources she employs, primarily the correspondence and journals of botanists and leading natural historians of the 17th and 18th centuries from both sides of the Atlantic, allow Schiebringer to adequately argue for a constructed agnotology concerning colonial abortifacients. Seeing as these botanists, men of letters, and statesmen (some serving all of these social positions simultaneously), reveals the sociocultural impetus behind the lack of experimentation surrounding colonial abortifacients.

Schiebringer work does an excellent job of portraying indigenous and enslaved peoples medical knowledge tradition as a form of resistance against the colonial enterprise. In particular, her claim that colonial abortifacients were used by female enslaved and indigenous people because of the rape culture that constituted gender relations within Caribbean colonies was an excellent analysis of colonial power dynamics.

Concerning HIST 635, Schiebringer’s work does an excellent job filling in the gaps on indigenous and enslaved peoples that Collecting the World omits. In addition, it adds much appreciated colonial context to the culture of knowledge creation during the “scientific revolution”. Though we have seen gender dynamics before in the class, Recipes immediately coming to mind, by structuring the book around the peacock flower discovered by Merian, Schiebringer forcefully includes females as producers of scientific knowledge and practitioners of developing experimentation during this period. Previously, while we have seen some women perform science, their contributions have mostly been relegated to a domestic sphere of knowledge production and experimentation. By virtue of giving Merian a critical role in her work, Scheibringer firmly places women within the ranks of prominent 17th and 18th scientific figures who so often enjoy the attention of scholars.

Historian Walter W. Woodward presents a unique and novel view of seventeenth-century New England in his 2010 book, Prospero’s America. In this book, he reframes colonial New England Puritan culture and life based on the life of John Winthrop, Jr., son of the first Massachusetts Bay governor and governor in his own right of Connecticut, and his Winthrop’s primary interest in religio-scientific pursuits through alchemy, a foundational piece of the developing New England culture of the time.

Woodward is a historian of Early America and the Atlantic world with a particular focus on public history and the history of Connecticut. Woodward earned his B.A. in English from the University of Florida, his Master’s in History from Cleveland State University, and his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut where he later became a professor until his recent retirement in 2022. In addition to his professorship, Woodward served as the Connecticut State Historian, now emeritus, and was the fifth person to serve the role. Woodward’s career in history began later in his life, originally working in the music and advertising industries before pursuing higher education; this tardy career change did not show signs of suffering in his historical work as Prospero’s America demonstrated with its generally positive reception and its winning the Homer D. Babbidge, Jr., Award from the Association for the Study of Connecticut History.

Prospero’s America unfolded the story of seventeenth-century New England through the life of Winthrop and his influence on the region especially in his intellectual, primarily alchemical, interests. The first two chapters lay out this influence by exploring the origins of alchemical practice as well as the succeeding historical views on alchemy as a pseudoscience which either showed flawed attempts at transmutation to get rich or vanity in believing they could reveal God’s secrets about the natural world. Woodward developed a third view of alchemy through understanding Winthrop’s life and motivations that “Christian alchemy,” as Woodward termed it, “fully embraces the goal of economic gain but simultaneously recognizes that such pursuits neither ruled out nor contrasted with the pursuit of alchemy for religious ends” (12). Part of why Winthrop provided a unique and proper lens for this view was his trans-Atlantic ties and his immersion in the opportunities only afforded in New England at the time. For one, New England was “abundant with land and natural resources” (41) which made practical experimentation more likely. Additionally, the ideas developing in the region, primarily in Connecticut as a direct response and departure from the practices of Massachusetts at the time, such as “Puritan Neoplatonism” as well as Winthrop’s engagement with other European thinkers promoted an intellectual culture in New England over time which mingled equally with the existing religious and entrepreneurial ideas of the time.

Chapters 3-5 develop on the background of the first two to show the forming of a new intellectual center in Connecticut; quite literally, the forming of a “New London” with Winthrop leading the way. Winthrop’s plan was to found and settle a new city at a prime location disputed by Connecticut and Massachusetts Bay which would serve as an economic and intellectual hub based around alchemical experimentation and practice. The idea of this new settlement helped to distinguish Connecticut from Massachusetts Bay by highlighting, through Winthrop’s plans, the divergence in cultural approach and pursuit of intellectual endeavors, especially as they related to religious ideas. Thus, Connecticut history becomes less of “a pastoral and largely insignificant mirror of the history being written to the north and east in Massachusetts Bay” (92). New London also served to highlight physical and political conflict between the colonies as well as with Native American Indians, particularly the Pequots and the Mohegans. Despite sustained conflict, New London did eventually take hold, in no small part due to Winthrop’s vision of alchemy’s influence, growing economic stability, and Winthrop’s own reputation built up through his own efforts as well as through the connections made possible in part due to alchemy, such as with Jonathan Brewster’s experiment which eventually attracted more attention, and people, to New London.

The last three chapters focus more on different aspects of Winthrop’s life and career as even more reflection of the importance and influence of Christian alchemy in colonial Connecticut during this time. Once again, Winthrop’s view of the importance of alchemy, particularly as it related to medical practices, made him a widely-sought physician that helped further develop New London and Connecticut as a whole. This was one major aspect of how alchemy fit into the larger network-building practice of the time, as was also featured in Elaine Leong’s Recipes and Everyday Knowledge. This same network would further help Winthrop build credibility and power in the community which he utilized to turn Connecticut’s aggressive witch trials around in 1660s, virtually stopping almost single-handedly. This, too, played a key role in Winthrop’s continued effort through his participation in and eventual leadership of the Royal Society at Whitehall to show his colony’s deference to the crown while also subtly asserting its autonomy. Ultimately, these factors served as prime examples of the interconnectedness of the pursuit of scientific knowledge and the machinations of cross-Atlantic politics.

Woodward’s work is highly engaging and extremely compelling in the way he structures his argument in Prospero’s America. He is thoroughly convincing in the integral relationship between natural philosophy and the pursuit of knowledge with the developing politics and culture, primarily between England and the New England colonies. Woodward also convincingly argued for Connecticut’s importance in its own right and separate development from Massachusetts Bay Colony, especially through Winthrop. Uniquely, despite the throughline provided by a heavy reliance upon his writings, Winthrop features more as a vehicle for understanding the culture of the period rather than being the absolute focus of the work. Additionally, Woodward, as he expounds in the introduction, crafts a history which supersedes any one specific topic of history, such as science and politics; it is this amalgamated story which he argues, and rightfully so, that the story of Winthrop, Connecticut, and the centrality of alchemical and “scientific” exploration in many aspects of New England life provides a quite unusual but no less important understanding of culture of New England colonies of the seventeenth century.

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 Birth of The Archive: A History of Knowledge is a book that focuses on the historical context of archives in early modern European history. Its author, Markus Freidrich, aims to address how Europeans used archives and how the physical state of archives influenced the production of knowledge. This is in contrast to what he describes as a traditional or normative approach, which does not consider the place of archives in society and culture. In this review, I intend to clarify what Freidrich’s approach is and if he accomplishes his goal of placing archives in their social and cultural contexts. Before doing that, I need to introduce the author and review the structure of his book.

According to his faculty page at the University of Hamburg, Markus Freidrich is a Professor of Early Modern History. His research interests include religion in early modern Europe, the history of knowledge and information, and archives and archival culture. He earned his PhD in history from the University of Munich and has taught at various universities in the United States and Germany. His accolades include a fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize, and a fellowship to the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

The Birth of The Archive includes eight chapters each with its own theme. Chapter one serves as an introduction, where Professor Freidrich describes his approach to his subject. He introduces readers to the historiography of the history of archives and comments on relevant theoretical points of view.

Regarding his approach, Freidrich distinguishes his view from scholarship in which, as he puts it on page 12, “[a]ctual archives scarcely enter the picture as historical objects.” As examples of that type of scholarship, he uses Michel Foucault’s and Jacques Derrida’s theoretical perspectives. On page 11, he mentions that Foucault views archives metaphorically and describes them as a “past model of reality.” Derrida’s perspective is psychoanalytical and involves the relationship – Freidrich uses the word “dialectical” – between memory and the suppression of fear of cultural loss.

In contrast, Freidrich’s comments about archives are more concrete. He begins chapter one with an incident: a break-in at the Chambre des Comptes in Paris in 1682, which draws attention to the importance of the environment in which archives existed. Unsurprisingly, parchment was expensive, and Freidrich connects the break-in to the illicit used-parchment trade in France at that time. As he puts it on page three, “[e]ven the most venerable archives of the most powerful authorities in the kingdom were at best only thinly separated from the pulsing social life of their immediate surroundings.”

The next two chapters of The Birth of The Archive focus on origins. Chapter two covers developments starting in the 11th century, including an increase in professionals who were literate and new methods used to organize and preserve the increasing volume of texts. Chapter three introduces the relationship between states and the growth of archives. Freidrich discusses the centralization of state and administrative records and the ways states used new archival policies to exercise control over territory. It is important to keep in mind that he does not claim that this early period is the beginning of archival history. As he points out on page 34, this was a period of reinforcement and institutionalization of existing archival institutions.

Chapter four focuses on the way people interpreted and thought about archives in the early modern era. Freidrich brings up early treatises on the subject of archives and discusses developments in jurisprudence and politics. Particularly interesting is the topic of historical memory and myth. On page 67, he mentions the assumption in the early modern period that archives were a way to preserve memory “in a generally credible way.” He also brings up attempts to find the origins of archives in a mythical prehistoric era and the Bible.

In Chapters five and six, Freidrich directs his attention to early the modern archivists themselves and their working conditions. He describes their relationships with the institutions in which they worked and the princes, ministers, and scholars who relied on them. Freidrich also discusses everyday life for archivists, including practical challenges they faced when dealing with old documents, the eternal struggle to bring order to archives, and managing collections of fragile documents that were susceptible to fire.

The last two chapters of The Birth of The Archive broaden the perspective of the book. Chapter seven revisits the theme of power. Freidrich starts the chapter by referring to 17th century writers who argued that archives underpin state power. He refers to modern writers, also, who argue that archives are a bridge between knowledge and power.

Chapter eight discusses the implications early modern archives had on historians. Given that Freidrich’s approach emphasizes the practical details of his subject matter, it is no surprise that he brings up challenges historians faced when dealing with archives. There were political obstacles, such the need to petition the authorities to gain access to a particular archive, which makes sense given the close connections between archives and political power. There were mundane obstacles, as well, such as difficulties with travel, poor conditions in archives, and uncooperative archivists.

In one anecdote, Freidrich mentions the discomfort a historian experienced while visiting archives in the south of France. Even though he was traveling at the behest of the French king and searching for documents with political significance, archivists made his life difficult. They forced him to work in conditions that tested his patience in what he referred to as, on page 182, “very small, very dark, and very uncomfortable places.”

Now that this review has reached the end of its summary of The Birth of The Archive, it is possible to return to the question at the beginning of this review: does Markus Freidrich succeed in placing archives in their social and cultural contexts? Indeed, he does. As the book summary above demonstrates, each chapter discusses a different theme in its historical context. While the author makes theoretical observations throughout the book, he consistently gives readers a sense of the world in which European archives developed.

The last question to ask, given the subject matter of the course for which this review is written, is how does The Birth of The Archive relate to the history of the Scientific Revolution. Early scientists, like Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton, do not appear in Markus Freidrich’s book. When Freidrich discusses the context surrounding archives, he focuses on politics, not on science. However, historians of science can learn a great deal from his book about how to approach an abstract or theoretical subject with a concern for its practical and historical context.

In addition, the connections Freidrich makes between power and knowledge are worth applying to early modern science. His book describes how historians and archivists paid attention to the dynamics of power, which was something early scientists did, as well. As much as we associate, for instance, Tycho Brahe’s famous observatory with scientific progress, for example, we should be willing to consider its place in the cultural and social world in which it existed, as Markus Freidrich does with archives in The Birth of The Archive.

Sentimental Savants: Philosophical Families in Enlightenment France by Meghan K. Roberts is an interesting new take on the individuals who participated in the Scientific Revolution during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Meghan K. Roberts is an associate professor at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. She has a Bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary, a Master’s degree from Northwestern University, and she earned her PhD from Northwestern University in 2011. She is currently teaching courses on Culture Wars in the Age of Enlightenment and Sex, Scandal, and Celebrity in Early Modern Europe. She has several journal articles published on different major philosophers during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. She is currently writing a book on media, masculinity, and medicine (http://www.meghankroberts.com/, https://www.bowdoin.edu/profiles/faculty/mroberts/).

Meghan Roberts in Sentimental Savants aims to show how the family as an institution played a vital role in the Scientific Revolution in developing their public image and discovery and dissemination of new knowledge. This is an especially interesting contribution to the scholarship because the academic community and general public both perceive the “Age of Reason” as being a time of unique thought. Emotional consideration and appeals to authority have been finally gotten rid of and logic and reason have prevailed. Roberts pushes back against this by using sources such as eulogies and biographical compendiums. She documents the debates philosophers were having with regard to whether they should have families or remain celibate, and the author connects the consequences of their conclusions to other issues such as inoculation.

The book is organized in a way that is easy to follow and the sort of materials it contends with are directly relatable to subjects that the average lay reader can sympathize with, such as love, family, friendship, and emotional health. For this reason, the audience of this book can be a popular audience, not just academic. In Chapter 1 she documents how Men of Letters were moving into a new era of thinking about family life and love. Instead of thinking of that aspect of life as being a distraction from their work, as had previous generations of philosophers, they now believed that they could be both men of letters and men of emotions. They also believed it was important for them to practice what they preached by living a virtuous family life. Chapter 2 talks about the role that their family members played in adding to their intellectual work. Roberts documents how oftentimes wives would act as research assistants and how when a philosopher lived a good family life this reflected well on their reputations.

Chapter 3 built upon the different lifestyles these thinkers chose and how they related to the public debates surrounding public health evolved. The author specifically engages with the questions surrounding inoculation against diseases like smallpox. She explains how one philosopher used emotional logic to convince the public of his point of view surrounding inoculation. “La Condamine manipulated cultural trends, most especially sentimentalism, as a way to bolster the public appeal of inoculation. He used the language of feeling to mediate between the public and medical community. She also talks about the concept of “enlightened love” which is “the complex blend of reason and sentiment that characterized the French Enlightenment.” Chapter 4 expands into the realm of children and the roles that philosophers played as parents. This allowed them to engage in “intimate empiricism“ to test certain ideas of the Enlightenment and garner further positive reputations with the general public. Chapter 5 uses the case study of Antoine Lavoistier to demonstrate the principles of sentimental paternalism and agricultural reform.

I believe that Meghan Roberts succeeds in what she set out to do. She utilizes her sources well and her analysis of different thinkers and their circumstances stand out in a way that is easy to picture. She states, “I argue that a new intellectual ideal emerged in the eighteenth century. Bachelorhood (if not necessarily celibacy) continued to appeal, but family life also beckoned. How lovely it would be, thought some philosophers, to have a devoted wife and affectionate children.” She demonstrates her arguments through the utilization of secondary sources, but mostly through the correspondence of her sentimental savants to show what was going on in their heads and their personal lives. She uses several different example philosophers and their families  to show that this new image of what it meant to be a man of letters meant. The only critique one could have that other historians seem to do, is she never outlines the limitations of her sources. Presumably, there is only so much that correspondence can depict, and one would imagine that many letters have been lost to the void of time. Having methodological humility is important in scholarship. This is especially important when presenting new research in a monograph. This is especially true when the author is making such claims as are being made in this piece. However, Roberts does do a good job of illustrating where in the historiography her research fits in. This gives a good landscape of how the discipline has been approaching these issues in the past, and it develops a helpful framework that enables academics and lay people alike to get their bearings as they enter into the pages of research that she has put together.

Overall, Sentimental Savants serves as a fascinating contribution to the history of science and history of emotions.  It reveals how scientists and critical thinkers of the time were not so cold and detached as many of us may seem to think. Indeed, for these figures, emotions did not need to be a hindrance and close connections were not just distractions. In her Conclusion, Roberts states, “The stoic, unmarried philosopher remained a powerful ideal during and long after the Enlightenment, but married men of letters discovered they had a bag of tricks unavailable to the unattached…Married men of letters drew attention to their loving families as proof that they were men of virtue more than qualified to make themselves useful to the public, to stand as role models as well as men of learning.”

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.