The Debate in the House of Lords on 'No Peace without Spain', 7 December 1711: A New Source

The debate in the house of lords on 'No Peace without Spain' in December 1711 was the first test of the strength of the administration of Robert Harley, earl of Oxford, in the upper House. Though there are more sources for this debate than is normal for proceedings in the Lords, few can claim to be by eyewitnesses. A newly 'discovered' anonymous letter from an eyewitness found in the papers of the lord great chamberlain's office in the Parliamentary Archives gives a detailed account of this important debate.     

Das Werden des Kosmos Von der Erfahrung der zeitlichen Dimension astronomischer Objekte im 18. Jahrhundert

The Permanent ‘Becoming’ of the Cosmos: On Experiencing the Time Dimension of Astronomical Entities in the 18th Century. - This paper deals with two of the initial stages through which the dimension of time, in the sense of an irreversible development, found its way into astronomical-cosmological thinking. The one resulted from the first consequental application of Newtonian principles and laws to cosmic entities outside of our solar system found in the General Natural History or Theory of the Heavens of Immanuel Kant (1755): Endeavoring to explain through natural causes first the peculiarities of the solar system, no longer naturally explainable through the celestial mechanics of Isaac Newton (such as the common orbital plane and rotational direction of all the members of the solar system and the distribution of the masses) - which, however, had been deducible in Johannes Keplers Weltharmonik -, and endeavoring secondly to explain above all the beginning of the inertial movement of all discrete heavenly bodies - which, however, could have been derived from René Descartes's vortex theory - without using arbitrary acts of God as Newton had done, Kant had to introduce an initial state in which matter in the form of atoms was equally and almost homogeneously distributed over the whole space (similar to the permanent state in Descartes's theory). Thereupon, according to Kant, the initial movements of the slowly growing masses resulted from the effect of gravitational forces. The parameters within the solar system which had to be explained, could then be easily deduced from the process of mass concentration at different points and from the resulting vortex movements. - The other initial stage is found in the classification of ‘nebulae’ by William Herschel who introduced the historical time factor, in the above-mentioned sense, as a principle of order in addition to the outward shape, which had become common for all the different elements in natural history during the second half of the 18th century. Thereupon the different shapes of the nebulae could be interpreted as stages of development from the primordial nebular state to multiple or single stars. (Herschel had not yet considered them to be accumulations of stars for lack of a suitable telescope.) Both initial stages, which arose out of the thinking of the second half of the 18th century, were still premature for astronomy and cosmology; they have only been taken up again since the end of the 19th century as a result of the emergence of astrophysics, which provided the empirical data for the earlier speculations and conclusions from analogy.     

Plant Based Subsistence Strategy of the Medieval Ishmaelite (12th–13th c.) Population in the Carpathian Basin (NE-Hungary)

During the excavation carried out at the outskirts of Hajdúböszörmény (NE-Hungary) in 2011, the remains of a 12–13th century settlement were brought to light. Linguistic and historical research has previously presumed that one of the main centres of medieval Hungary’s Muslim (Ishmaelites) population is located in the northern-eastern part of the Great Hungarian Plain. At Hajdúböszörmény–Téglagyár ‘2’ archaeological site several household units were systematically sampled for archaeobotanical analysis. The recovered ceramics differ from the known ceramic production of the Árpád Age, whereas significant differences were detected in the zooarchaeological assemblage, too. The archaeobotanical record, representing 23 features, consists of 2679 items of charred macro-botanical remains that belong to 54 taxa. The record is predominated by the presence of cereals among which rye (Secale cereale L. subsp. cereale) and common barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) are the most frequent. Besides the dominance of cereals, pulses and vegetables, as well as gathered fruit remains were identified. By the comparison of results to other Árpád Age sites, we assume that the revealed ethno-archaeobotanical information identifies a population that used similar plant resources, but in a different way and strategy than the known Christian population of the Carpathian Basin.     

“Die wissenschaftliche Ausbildung des Arztes ist eine Culturfrage …”. Über das Verhältnis von Wissenschaftsanspruch,Bildungsprogramm und Praxis der Medizin

The article shows that the elite, nationalistic and imperial mentality of German medicine in the second half of the nineteenth century was closely connected to its aim to be understodd as a natural science. With this in view leading representatives of German medicine propagated a scientific approach to man and nature instead of the traditional values of humanistic education (“Bildung”). One of the most important consequences of the new scientific ideal in medicine — integration in governmental planning, the change in professionel status of doctors, the increasing tendeny to recognize biologistic ideologies — was the loss of the medical ideal of the ars medica, a subject which has not received sufficient thematic attention. This theme is explored in the third part of the article.     

Dating the Trollesgave site and the Bromme culture – chronological fix-points for the Lateglacial settlement of Southern Scandinavia

The Bromme culture belongs to the Lateglacial, the period when people settled in the recently deglaciated Southern Scandinavia. Until now there have been only a few imprecise fix-points relating to the chronological position of this archaeological culture. This situation can now be improved with the aid of research results from a Bromme culture settlement at Trollesgave in SE Denmark. Using pollen and plant macrofossil data, Lateglacial lacustrine deposits containing waste material from the settlement can be assigned to the end of the climatically mild Allerød period. A series of ¹⁴C dates establishes the age of the settlement as c. 10 826 ± 49 ¹⁴C years BP (12 871–12 590 cal yr BP). By correlation with climate data from the Greenland ice cores, the occupation can be assigned to the early part of the cold climatic zone GS-1, thus demonstrating that the global ice-core climate zones are not absolutely synchronous with the regional division into biozones.     

“This Remarkable Piece of Antiquity”: Epic Conventions in Shelley’s Oedipus Tyrannus; or,Swellfoot the Tyrant

ABSTRACT

Shelley’s Swellfoot the Tyrant has recently begun to gain the concerted attention of critics, who have noted the play’s signature blend of low and high, of ephemeral, late Regency politics with the classic genres of Sophoclean tragedy, Aristophanic comedy, and mock epic. But Austin Warren’s famous and widely accepted definition of mock epic as “not mockery of the epic but elegantly affectionate homage, offered by a writer who finds [the serious epic] irrelevant to his age” does not describe Shelley’s earnest goal of immediate political reform in authoring Swellfoot. Instead, the play evinces Shelley’s unique, conscious reconfiguration of four conventions characteristic of the high, classical epic: the “prosperous breeze”; the epic simile; katabasis or descent into the underworld; and divine intervention. I argue that Shelley’s comic adaptation of these epic conventions reflects his serious aim of helping effect reform through Swellfoot and embodies his absorption of the concept of Shakespeare’s history plays as an experimental hybrid of dramatic forms with epic subjects, gained during his earlier reading of A. W. Schlegel’s Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. Though the immediate suppression of Swellfoot prevented its relevance in its own historical moment, it comprises a singular hybrid of Aristophanic satire and Sophoclean tragedy with high epic conventions, while ironically also identifying Shelley as a proponent of the French neoclassical theory of the epic’s consciously didactic purpose propounded by Le Bossu.     

The development and evolution of “cerebral thermometry”: The physiology underlying a nineteenth-century approach to cerebral localization and neurological diagnosis

ABSTRACT

Surface thermometers were developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. From the 1850s through the 1880s, collaborations between physicians, research scientists, and instrument makers produced clear improvements in the technology to measure cranial surface temperatures, with development of self-registering mercury surface thermometers resistant to pressure and little influenced by ambient temperature, apparatus for recording cranial surface temperatures from multiple stations simultaneously, and development of thermoelectric apparatus. Physiologic studies of cranial surface thermometry were conducted over a quarter century from 1861 to 1886. Beginning in the 1860s Albers in Bonn, Germany, and Lombard at Harvard and later in England systematically investigated surface temperatures on the head using surface thermometers and thermoelectric apparatus; they demonstrated that head temperatures were variable over time and across individuals and were not clearly influenced by thinking or muscular contraction but were influenced by ambient air temperature. In 1880 Amidon in the United States claimed that cranial surface thermometry during exertion produced localized increases in surface temperature on the contralateral scalp in a specific pattern (“external motive areas”) indicating underlying brain areas responsible for each movement. Amidon’s results were not reproduced by experienced physiologists in England or France. Contemporaries recognized that significant technical and practical problems limited the accuracy and reliability of cranial surface thermometry. Physiological studies of cranial surface thermometry ended in the mid 1880s, although some clinicians who were early advocates promoted its use in clinical contexts into the early twentieth century.