A Counterblaste to Tobacco by King James

 A Counterblaste to Tobacco by King James. 1604. Online. December 15, 2023.

The colony of Jamestown finally became profitable in part because of the discovery of tobacco, introduced to the English by the Native Americans. Sir Walter Raleigh brought it back to England & it became very popular. Even Queen Elizabeth tried it. Soon tons of ppl in England were addicted to it & Virginia couldn’t grow enough of it. King James hated tobacco & wrote this essay to try to convince the English to give it up. However, he was making a lot of money from it — he didn’t make it illegal. 

Most of the argument he makes is very racist & boils down to saying that good white Christian Englishmen shouldn’t be like the savage indians, who he basically compares to animals. Any medical information he includes seems to all be about humorism. The essay is around 5,000 words long.

• …if a man smoke himselfe to death with it (and many have done) O then some other disease must beare the blame for that fault. So doe olde harlots thanke their harlotrie for their many yeeres, that custome being healthfull (say they) ad purgandos Renes (to cleanse the kidneys), but never have minde how many die of the Pockes in the flower of their youth. And so doe olde drunkards thinke they prolong their dayes, by their swinelike diet, but never remember howe many die drowned in drinke before they be halfe olde.

• WHAT DID HE THINK METEORS WERE? - the Meteors, which being bred of nothing else but of the vapours and exhalations sucked up by the Sunne out of the earth, the Sea, and waters yet are the sarne smoakie vapours turned, and transformed into Raynes, Snowes, Deawes, hoare Frostes, and such like waterie Meteors, as by the contrarie the raynie cloudes are often transformed and evaporated in blustering winds.

• A custome lothsome to the eye, hatefull to the Nose, harmefull to the braine, dangerous to the Lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, neerest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse.

A Trewe Relacyon by George Percy

 A Trewe Relacyon of the Pcedeinges and Ocurrentes of Momente wch have hapned in Virginia from the Tyme Sr Thomas GATES was shippwrackte uppon the BERMUDES ano 1609 untill my depture outt of the Country wch was in ano Dñi 1612 by George Percy. 1612. Online. December 14, 2023.

George Percy was one of the original 105 founding members of the Virginia colony. This letter is about his experiences there. A lot of the Vespucci canabalism is probably made up, but I discovered that there is actually way more historical evidence of European colonists resorting to cannibalism to stave off hunger, which is what led me to read this. I wanted to read about Starving Time in Jamestown.The letter is around 8,000 words long.

I couldn’t figure out a few words here & there, but I would usually much rather read Renaissance literature without modernized spelling than a modernized version, it takes something away from it for me.

• “If we Trewley Consider the diversety of miseries mutenies & famishmentts wch have Attended upon discoveries & plantacyons in theis our moderne Tymes we shall nott fynde our plantacyon in Virginia to have Suffered Aloane.”

• “MAGELANE Suffered also in soe mutche thatt haveinge eaten upp all their horses to susteine themselves wthall, mutenies did Aryse & growe Amongste them for the wch the generall DIEGO MENDOSA cawsed some of them to be executed Extremety of hunger in forceinge other secrettly in the night to cutt downe Their deade fellowes from of the gallowes & bury them in their hungry Bowelles.” – BURY THEM IN THEIR HUNGRY BOWELS

• What Native Americans did to a few colonists: “...their Braynes weare cutt & skraped outt of their heades wth mussell shelles…”

• Recounting of story about a Spanish governer: “the Indyans inforced him to drincke upp A certeine quantety of melted gowlde useinge theis words unto him: now glutt thy selfe wth gowlde” Drinking the liquid gold killed him, which of course would be boiling hot. I remember hearing about this story before: “Molten gold was poured down his throat until his bowels burst” (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1769869/ This is an article where some scientists determined that the governor’s bowels might have burst from a buildup of steam in the intestines.)

• “...digge up dead corpses outt of graves & to eate them & some have Licked upp the Bloode wch hathe fallen from their weake fellowes & amongste the reste this was moste Lamentable Thatt one of our Colline murdered his wyfe Ripped the childe outt of her woambe & threw itt into the River & after chopped the Mother in pieces & salted her for his foode The same not beinge discovered before he had eaten Pte thereof for the wch crewell & inhumane factt I aiudged him to be executed the acknowledgmt of the dede beinge inforced from him by torture haveinge hunge by the Thumbes wth weightes att his feete a quarter of an howere before he wolde confesse the same.”

• “Hughe PRYSE being pinched wth extreme famin In A furious distracted moode did come openly into the markett place Blaspheameinge exclameinge & cryeinge owtt thatt there was noe god. Alledgeinge that if there were A god he wolde nott suffer his creatures whom he had made & framed to indure those miseries & to Pishe for wante of foods & sustenance Butt itt appeared the same day that the Almighty was displeased wth him for goeinge thatt afternoone wth A Butcher A corpulentt fatt man into the woods to seke for some Reliefe bothe of them weare slaine by Salvages. & after beinge fownde gods Indignacyon was showed upon PRYSES Corpes wch was Rente in pieces wth wolves or other wylde Beasts & his Bowles Torne outt of his boddy beinge A Leane spare man & the fatt Butcher nott lyeinge Above sixe yardes from him was fownd altogether untouched onely by the Salvages Arrowes whereby he Receiaved his deathe.”

The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci

 The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci & other documents illustrative of his career by Amerigo Vespucci. 1500s. Translated from the italian by Clements R Markham. Ebook. December 13, 2023.

America is named after Amerigo Vesupcci, a rich Italian merchant from the 16th century who became an explorer of the New World. He supposedly visited the New World four different times. He wrote letters about each trip, known as “The Four Voyages.” I just read those four letters, which adds up to around 30 pages. Generally Vespucci is credited with being the first person to realize that the Americas were a new continent, & not part of the Indies.

Most historians think that two of the letters might be greatly exaggerated or made up, either by Vespucci or by some other anonymous person. The most interesting letter imo, the first letter, is probably fake. It is the letter with the most sensational details, & the biggest adventures.

I love this sentence: “What a thing it is to seek unknown lands, & how difficult, being ignorant, to narrate briefly what happened.”

There is a lot of talk about the Native Americans being cannibals. After researching more about it, it seems like a lot of early literature about the Americas mention cannibalism as being commonplace among the indigenous people the crew meet. There were definitely instances of ritual cannibalism (the Aztecs for example) & instances of tribes eating part of the bodies of those they killed in war in order to gain power from them, but there is very little evidence that Native Americans ate each other for food, & certainly not on a regular basis. 

Didn’t learn much about what type of person Vespucci was. The interesting stories are broken up by long boring factual descriptions of where the ships went on certain dates.

• “They eat little flesh, unless it be human flesh… For they eat all their enemies that they kill or take, as well females as males, with so much barbarity that it is a brutal thing to mention…”

• “...human flesh is an ordinary article of food among them.”

• “I have seen a man eat his children & wife; & I knew a man who was popularly credited to have eaten 300 human bodies.”

• “Only four boys remained in the canoe, who were not of their tribe, but prisoners form some other land. They had been castrated, & were all without the virile member, & with the scars fresh, at which we wondered much.”

READING LIST

1.  The Letters of Amerigo Vespucci & other documents illustrative of his career by Amerigo Vespucci. 1500s. Translated from the Italian by Clements R Markham. Ebook. December 29, 2024.
2. A Trewe Relacyon  of the Pcedeinges and Ocurrentes of Momente wch have hapned in Virginia from the Tyme Sr Thomas GATES was shippwrackte uppon the BERMUDES ano 1609 untill my depture outt of the Country wch was in ano Dñi 1612 by George Percy. 1612. Online. December 30, 2023. http://www.virtualjamestown.org/exist/cocoon/jamestown/fha/J1063
3. A Counterblaste to Tobacco by King James. 1604. Online. December 31, 2023. 2023. https://www.laits.utexas.edu/poltheory/james/blaste/blaste.html  
4. The Anatomy of Melancholy, What it is: With all the Kinds, Causes, Symptomes, Prognostickes, and Several Cures of it. In Three Maine Partitions with their several Sections, Members, and Subsections. Philosophically, Medicinally, Historically, Opened and Cut Up) by Robert Burton. 1621-1651. Hard cover. January 1-
5. The Book of Psalms. King James Version. January 1-
6. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark by William Shakespeare. 1599-1601. Paperback. January 1-
7. A boke or counseill against the disease commonly called the sweate or sweatyng sicknesse by John Caius. 1552. Online. January 2, 2023. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33503/33503-h/33503-h.htm 

The Corpses of the DeWitt Brothers by Jan de Baen. 1672 - 1675.

 

THE PUBLIC EXECUTION OF TWO DUTCH POLITICIAN BROTHERS, JOHAN & CORNELIUS.

With his power in tatters after having been forced to resign, Johan went to visit Cornelius in prison at the Hague on August 20th, 1672. Unwittingly he walked straight into a trap. At the prison, an organized lynch mob awaited his arrival. “Everyone wanted to draw a drop of blood from the fallen hero and tear off a shred from his garments,” wrote the French writer, Alexander Dumas, in The Black Tulip.

The mob broke into the prison and accosted the two brothers. Dragging them into the streets, they hung them by their feet in the city’s public gibbet, one of the most humiliating forms of punishment and execution of the 17th Century. “After having mangled, and torn, and completely stripped naked the two brothers, the mob dragged their naked bodied to the extemporized gibbet, where amateur executioners hung them by their feet,” wrote Dumas.

The frenzied mob then literally ripped the brothers apart. According to Dumas: “Then came the most dastardly scoundrels of all, who had not dared to strike the living flesh. Cut the dead piece, and then went about town selling small slices of the bodies of Johan and Cornelius at ten sous a piece.”

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/johan-de-witt-0016915

The Rotting Pair by Anonymous

 

Saint Victoria's incorruptible body

Incorruptible bodies are those believed to not succumb to the normal process of decomposition by way of divine intervention. But Saint Victoria’s body needed a little help. Her incomplete corpse was supplemented with wax and hair and clothes from someone else entirely, adorned with a crown of roses.

Saint Victoria, the patron of Anticoli, Italy, was an early christian martyr. She is one of many examples of faithful Catholic women who were killed after spurning a powerful pagan suitor. You can see her skeleton through some parts of the wax facade, such as her teeth and parts of her hand.  

The martyr's wax-enhanced skeletal remains lie preserved in a glass case in the Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome. 

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/saint-victorias-incorruptible-body

Borage & Hellebore

 

Borage & Hellebore fill two scenes

Sovereign plants to purge the veins

Of melancholy, and cheer the heart,

Of those black fumes which make it smart,

To clear the Brain of misty fogs,

Which dull our senses, & Soul clogs.

The best medicine that ere God made

For this malady, if well assayed.

Pliny the Elder and Dioscorides said that borage was the nepenthe mentioned in Homer, which caused forgetfulness when mixed with wine.

King Henry VIII's last wife, Catherine Parr, used borage in a concoction to treat melancholy.

Francis Bacon thought that borage had "an excellent spirit to repress the fuliginous vapour of dusky melancholie."

John Gerard's Herball mentions an old verse concerning the plant: "Ego Borago, Gaudia semper ago (I, Borage, bring always joys)". He asserts:

Those of our time do use the flowers in salads to exhilerate and make the mind glad. There be also many things made of these used everywhere for the comfort of the heart, for the driving away of sorrow and increasing the joy of the mind. The leaves and flowers of Borage put into wine make men and women glad and merry and drive away all sadness, dullness and melancholy, as Dioscorides and Pliny affirm. Syrup made of the flowers of Borage comfort the heart, purge melancholy and quiet the frantic and lunatic person. The leaves eaten raw engender good blood, especially in those that have been lately sick.

"hellebore" used by Hippocrates as a purgative.

Despite its toxicity, "black hellebore" was used by the Greek and Romans to treat paralysis, gout and other diseases, more particularly insanity.

H. niger is commonly called the Christmas rose, due to an old legend that it sprouted in the snow from the tears of a young girl who had no gift to give the Christ Child in Bethlehem.

In Greek mythology, Melampus of Pylos used hellebore to save the daughters of the king of Argos from a madness, induced by Dionysus, that caused them to run naked through the city, crying, weeping, and screaming.

During the Siege of Kirrha in 585 BC, hellebore was reportedly used by the Greek besiegers to poison the city's water supply. The defenders were subsequently so weakened by diarrhea that they were unable to defend the city from assault.

In a fit of madness induced by Hera, Heracles killed his children by Megara. His madness was cured using hellebore.

Hellebore plants are usually left alone by animals such as deer and rabbits because the leaves of the plant produce poisonous alkaloids, making them distasteful to animals. The poisonous alkaloids have been known to sometimes bother gardeners with sensitive skin.

Symptoms of ingestion include: burning of the mouth and throat, salivation, vomiting, abdominal cramping, diarrhea, nervous symptoms, and possibly depression. Consuming large quantities of hellebore plants can be fatal. 

The poison on the outside of the plant causes irritation and burning sensations on the skin.

The species historically known as "Black hellebore" cause tinnitus, vertigo, stupor, thirst, anaphylaxis, emesis (vomiting), catharsis, bradycardia (slowing of the heart rate), and finally, collapse and death from cardiac arrest.

///

Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy:

“Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired, was first found out by Melanpodius a shepherd, as Pliny records, lib. 25. cap. 5 who, seeing it to purge his goats when they raved..."

a common proverb among the Greeks and Latins, to bid a dizzard or a mad man go take hellebore; as in Lucian, Menippus to Tantalus, Tantale desipis, helleboro epoto tibi opus est, eoque sane meraco, thou art out of thy little wit, O Tantalus, and must needs drink hellebore, and that without mixture.

https://sententiaeantiquae.com/2018/07/14/if-youre-sad-and-have-the-urge-eat-hellebore-and-take-a-purge/

Albrecht Durer's three Meisterstiche "master prints"

Melencolia I is a large 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. Its central subject is an enigmatic and gloomy winged female figure thought to be a personification of melancholia – melancholy. Holding her head in her hand, she stares past the busy scene in front of her. The area is strewn with symbols and tools associated with craft and carpentry, including an hourglass, weighing scales, a hand plane, a claw hammer, and a saw. Other objects relate to alchemy, geometry or numerology. Behind the figure is a structure with an embedded magic square, and a ladder leading beyond the frame. The sky contains a rainbow, a comet or planet, and a bat-like creature bearing the text that has become the print's title.

Knight, Death and the Devil is a large 1513 engraving by the German artist Albrecht Dürer. A stolid armoured knight on a proud horse, accompanied by his faithful dog, rides through a wild narrow gorge flanked by a goat-headed devil and the figure of death riding a pale horse. Death's rotting corpse holds an hourglass, a reminder of the shortness of life. The rider moves through the scene looking away from the creatures lurking around him, and appears almost contemptuous of the threats, and is thus often seen as symbol of courage; the knight's armour, the horse which towers in size over the beasts, and the oak leaves are symbolic of the resilience of faith, while the knight's plight may represent Christians' earthly journey towards the Kingdom of Heaven symbolized by the city on the hill.

Saint Jerome in His Study is a copper engraving of 1514 by the German artist Albrecht Dürer. Saint Jerome is shown sitting behind his desk, engrossed in work. The table, on the corner of which is a cross, is typical of the Renaissance. An imaginary line from Jerome's head passing through the cross would arrive at the skull on the window ledge, as if contrasting death and the Resurrection. The lion in the foreground is part of the traditional iconography of St. Jerome, and near it is a sleeping dog, an animal found frequently in Dürer's works, symbolizing loyalty. 

Jerome is also often depicted with a lion, in reference to the popular hagiographical belief that Jerome had tamed a lion in the wilderness by healing its paw. 

The positioning of the Crucifix on Jerome's desk is such that when he looks at it he can also see the skull by the window. Looking at the crucifix reminds of the resurrection of Jesus, which righted the wrongs of Adam leading to death, represented by the skull. The hourglass represents the finite space of time that is a man's life. Viewing these symbols together leads to the thought of man's mortality, and the method by which to save the immortal soul.

What the Barbary Corsairs (pirates) would say to their prisoners

God is great.

Do not delude yourself, the world is thus.

If the wheel of fortune turns, you will return home.

The Four Humors

SANGUINE

blood, the spring sanguine. optimistic or positive. air. too much: hot and wet, sweating. produced by liver. 

CHOLERIC

yellow bile, the summer choleric. bad tempered or iritable. fire. hot and dry, parched.

PHLEGMATIC

phlegm, the autumnal phlegmatic, an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition. water. too much: cold and wet.

MELANCHOLY

black bile, the winter melancholy. a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause. earth. too much: cold and dry.

The Moretta Mask - void mask

 

The moretta mask, reserved exclusively for women, was a Venetian mask that was round and covered with black velvet. Also known as the 'muta', it perfectly concealed the features of the wearer's face and was very common in Venice in the 18th century. 

Giovanni Grevembroch, who penned wonderful descriptions of Venetian costumes, wrote this in the 18th century:

“The heads of the family and the husbands led the wives and the sons to the Piazza [S. Marco], […] had her face covered by a black moretta, which created such contrast to the whiteness of the flesh that it shone, making it highly visible.”

Covering one's face in order to appear more attractive ('visible') may seem like a contradiction, but it was not so according to the special logic of Venetian women. These women were rather disinhibited in showing their bodies, as evidenced by the fashion called “décolleté alla veneziana”, famous throughout Europe. It featured a very generous, square neckline. The breast was veiled in a light fabric, which covered the chest precariously. It was also common to put makeup on the nipples with carmine red so as to make them more 'visible' behind the transparent fabric.

https://www.camacana.com/en-UK/moretta-venetian-mask.php

Polish pulpits shaped like the whale that swallowed Jonah

 

Anna Morandi

 

In Morandi’s 18th-century Bologna, it would have been unusual, to say the least, to watch a woman so unflinchingly peel back the skin of a human body. Yet Morandi did just that, even drawing the praise of the Bolognese Pope’s for her efforts to reveal the secrets of vitality and sensation concealed beneath the skin. Working at the delicate intersection of empirical science and the artistic rendering of the human body, Morandi helped elevate her city as a hub of science and culture.

As an anatomist, Morandi went where no woman had gone before, helping to usher in a new understanding of the male body and developing new techniques for examining organs. She also served as the public face of an unusual scientific partnership with her husband, a sculptor and anatomist. Yet in one way, she was no exception to what has become a common narrative of historical women in science: Despite her achievement and acclaim during her lifetime, her role was ultimately written out of history.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/lady-anatomist-who-brought-dead-bodies-light-180964165/

Jusepe de Ribera

 

Retrato doble (double portrait) by Matthäus Merian, 1616.

 Non sum sicut caeteri homines.

(I am not like other people.)

Dives sum et locupletatus et nullius egeo. 

(I am rich and enriched, and I have need of no one.)

 

Ecce ad nihilum redactus sum, et nescivi.

(Behold, I am reduced to nothing, and I did not know.)

Quam miser et miserabilis pauper caecus et nudus essem. 

(How wretched and pitiful, blind and naked I was.)

Man Eaten by Worms - Jacques du Broeucq

The glory of the sun will be dimmed & the earth, tideless & inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for the moment disturbed its solitude

 “Imperishable moments and immortal deeds, death itself and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been. The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed and the earth tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for the moment disturbed its solitude. Man will go down into the pit and all his thoughts will perish. The uneasy consciousness, which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.”

― Arthur Balfour