ARTIFICIAL PEARLS…

ARTIFICIAL PEARLS

Those round calcareous[757] excrescences found both in the bodies and shells, especially on the nacreous coat, of several kinds of shell-fish[758], have been much used as ornaments since the earliest ages[759]. The beautiful play of colours exhibited on their surface has raised them to a high value[760]; and this they have always retained on account of their scarcity and the expense arising from the laborious manner in which they are collected[761]. By the increase of luxury among the European nations, the use of pearls has become more common; and even in Pliny’s time they were worn by the wives of the inferior public officers, in order that they might vie in the costliness of their dress with ladies of the first rank. It is probable, therefore, that methods were early invented to occasion or hasten the formation of pearls; and as at present those who cannot afford to purchase gold, jewels, and porcelain, use in their stead pinchbeck, artificial gems, and stone-ware, so methods were fallen upon to make artificial pearls.

The art of forcing shell-fish to produce pearls was known, in the first centuries of the christian æra to the inhabitants of the coasts of the Red-sea, as we are told by the philosopher Apollonius, who thought that circumstance worthy of particular notice. The Indians dived into the sea, after they had rendered it calm and more transparent by pouring oil into it. They then enticed the fish by means of some bait to open their shells; and having pricked them with a sharp pointed instrument, received the liquor that flowed from them in small holes made in an iron vessel, in which they hardened into real pearls[762]. Olearius says that this account is to be found in no other author: but it has at least been copied by Tzetzes[763].

We are as yet too little acquainted with shell-fish to be able to determine with certainty how much truth there really may be in this relation: but there is great reason to conjecture from it that the people who lived on the borders of the Red-sea were then acquainted with a method of forcing shell-fish to produce pearls; and as the arts in general of the ancient Indians have been preserved without much variation, the process employed by the Chinese at present, to cause a certain kind of mussels to form pearls, seems to confirm the account given by Philostratus. In the beginning of summer, at the time when the mussels repair to the surface of the water and open their shells, five or six small beads, made of mother-of-pearl, and strung on a thread, are thrown into each of them. At the end of a year, when the mussels are drawn up and opened, the beads are found covered with a pearly crust, in such a manner that they have a perfect resemblance to real pearls. The truth of this information cannot be doubted, though some experiments made in Bohemia for the same purpose were not attended with success[764]. It has been confirmed by various persons[765], and it is very probable that some operations and secrets, without which the process would prove fruitless even in China, may be unknown to the Europeans. Besides, many observations are known which seem to show the possibility of such an effect being produced. Fabricius says that he saw in the possession of Sir Joseph Banks, at London, large Chamæ[766], brought from China, in which there were several bits of iron wire, incrusted with a substance of a perfect pearly nature[767]. These bits of wire, he said, had been sharp, and it appeared as if the mussels, to secure themselves against the points of the wire, had covered them with this substance, by which means they had been rendered blunt. May not therefore the process employed by the ancients be still practised? And may not these bits of wire have been the same as those spikes used by the people in the neighbourhood of the Red-sea for pricking mussels, and which perhaps slipped from the hands of the Chinese workmen and remained in the animals?

The invention therefore of Linnæus cannot be called altogether new. That great man informed the king and council in the year 1761, that he had discovered an art by which mussels might be made to produce pearls, and he offered to disclose the method for the benefit of the kingdom. This however was not done, but he disposed of his secret to one Bagge, a merchant at Gottenburg, for the sum of eighteen thousand copper dollars, which make about five hundred ducats. In the year 1780, the heirs of this merchant wished to sell to the highest bidder the sealed-up receipt[768]: but whether the paper was purchased, or who bought it, I do not know; for Professor Retzius at Lund, of whom I inquired respecting it, could not inform me[769]. In the year 1763, it was said in the German newspapers, that Linnæus was ennobled on account of this discovery, and that he bore a pearl in his coat of arms; but both these assertions are false, though Fabricius conjectures that the first may be true[770]. Linnæus received his patent of nobility, which, together with his arms, I have seen, in the year 1756, consequently long before he said anything respecting that discovery, of which the patent does not make the least mention. What in his arms has been taken for a pearl, is an egg, by which M. Tilas, whose business it then was to blazon the arms of ennobled families, meant to represent all nature, after the manner of the ancient Egyptians. The arms are divided into three fields, each of which, by the colour forming the ground, expresses one of the kingdoms of nature; the red signifying the animal, and the green the vegetable, &c. Over the helmet, by way of crest, is placed the Linnæa[771]; that beautiful little moth the Phalæna linneella, shining with its silvery colours, is displayed around the border instead of festoons; and below is the following motto, Famam extendere factis. Linnæus once showed me, among his collection of shells, a small box filled with pearl, and said, “Hos uniones confeci artificio meo; sunt tantum quinque annorum, et tamen tam magni.” “These pearls I made by my art, and though so large they are only five years old.” They were deposited near the Unio margaritifera, from which most of the Swedish pearls are procured; and the son, who was however not acquainted with his father’s secret, said the experiments were made only on this kind of mussel, though Linnæus himself assured me that they would succeed on all kinds.

I conjecture that Linnæus alluded to this art in his writings so early as the year 1746, or long before he ever thought of keeping it a secret. The passage I mean is in the sixth edition of his Systema Naturæ, where he says, “Margarita. Testæ excrescentia latere interiore, dum exterius latus perforatur[772].” I once told him that I had discovered his secret in his own works; but he seemed to be displeased, did not inquire after the passage, and changed the discourse. That pearls are produced when the shells have been pierced or injured in a certain manner, is highly probable, and has been in modern times often remarked[773]. It appears also, that the animal has the power of sometimes filling up such openings with a calcareous substance, which it deposits in them. This substance assumes the figure of the orifice, and the animal particles it contains give it its brightness and lustre[774]. Pearl-fishers have long known that mussels, the shells of which are rough and irregular, or which exhibit marks of violence, commonly contain pearls, though they are found also in others in which the same appearances are not observed[775]. I am perfectly aware that some experiments made by piercing the shells of mussels, have been unsuccessful[776]; but this does not prove that it is impossible to procure pearls in that manner. Those who made them did not perhaps pierce the proper part of the shell; perhaps they made the orifice so large that it weakened the animal; and they may not have chosen the fittest season of the year. The strongest objection however which can be made on this subject, is the undeniable truth that the proper valuable pearls are not found adhering to the shell, but in the body only; and that therefore those calcareous balls which fill up holes, cannot be perfect pearls. But from the words of Linnæus above-quoted, I am led to conjecture, that he only made a hole in the shell without piercing it quite through. Linnæus also may have done some injury to the animal itself when it opened its shell; for it is certain that testaceous animals are strong-lived, and can easily sustain any violence. It appears by the Transactions of the Swedish Academy, that some have been of opinion that shell-fish might be made to produce pearls by a particular kind of nourishment; and Lister[777] thinks that these excrescences would be more abundant, were the mussels placed in water impregnated with calcareous matter; but Professor Linnæus seems certain that his father employed none of these methods.

Under the name of false or artificial pearls are understood at present small beads, so prepared by art as to approach very near to real pearls in shape, lustre, colour, and polish. It appears that in Pliny’s time such were not known, else he certainly would have mentioned them. The invention was not easy, and this difficulty to imitate pearls has contributed, with the reasons before mentioned, to keep up their value. It would seem that at first, hopes were entertained of finding a method to make large pearls from small or broken ones. Tzetzes speaks of this imagined art, and receipts for that purpose have been still retained in various books, where they fill up room and amuse the ignorant; for it is hardly possible to give to the pulverised calcareous matter sufficient hardness, and that lustre which belongs only to the surface of real pearls, and which, when these are destroyed, is irrecoverably lost. More ingenious was the idea of making pearl-coloured glass beads of that kind called margaritini[778]; but it excites no wonder that this was not done earlier, although the art of making coloured glass is very old; for opal colours are obtained only by a skilful process and the addition of putty, bone-ashes, and other substances. Still earlier was the invention of making hollow glass beads, which were incrusted on the inside with a pearl-coloured varnish. This method was first pursued, as far as I have been able to learn, by some artists at Murano; but their invention seems to have been considered by the government as too fraudulent, and was therefore prohibited, as we are told by Francis Massarius, who lived in the beginning of the sixteenth century at Venice, and must therefore have had an opportunity of knowing the truth of this circumstance[779]. Some say that an amalgam of quicksilver was used for these pearls; and if that was the case, the object of the Venetian prohibition was rather of a medical nature. After this, small balls of wax or gum were covered with a pearl-coloured enamel. These were praised on account of their lustre; but as their beauty was destroyed by moisture, they did not continue long in use[780]. A French bead-maker, however, named Jaquin, at length found out the manner of preparing the glass pearls used at present, which excel all others, and which approach as near to nature as possible, without being too expensive.

Jaquin once observed, at his estate near Passy, that when those small fish called ables or ablettes were washed, the water was filled with fine silver-coloured particles. He suffered this water therefore to stand for some time, and obtained from it a sediment which had the lustre of the most beautiful pearls; and which on that account led him to the attempt of making pearls from it[781]. He scraped off the scales of the fish, and called the soft shining powder, which was diffused in the water, essence of pearl, or essence d’orient[782]. At first he covered with it small beads made of gypsum, or hardened paste; and, as everything new, particularly in France, is eagerly sought after, this invention was greatly admired and commended. The ladies, however, for whose use it was chiefly intended, soon found that it did not entirely answer their expectations. They were displeased because this pearly coat, when exposed to heat, separated from the beads, adhered to the skin, and gave it a brightness which they did not wish. They proposed themselves, that small hollow glass beads might be covered, in the inside, in the same manner as mirrors are silvered, with the essence of pearl; and thus was brought to perfection an art of which the following account will enable the reader to form some idea.

Of a kind of glass easy to be melted, and made sometimes a little bluish or dark, slender tubes are prepared, which are called girasols[783]. From these the artist blows, by means of a lamp, as many small hollow globules as he may have occasion for. One workman can in a day blow six thousand; but when they are required to be extremely beautiful, only twelve or fifteen hundred; and that they may have a greater resemblance to nature, he gives them sometimes blemishes, like those generally observed in real pearls. They are made on all figures; some shaped like a pear, others like an olive, and some that may be considered as coques de perles[784]. To overlie these thin glass bubbles he mixes the pearl essence with a solution of isinglass; and the more of the former he uses, the more beautiful and more valuable the pearls become. This varnish, when heated, he blows into each globule with a fine glass pipe, and spreads it over the whole internal surface, by shaking the pearls thus prepared in a vessel placed over the table where he is at work, and which he puts in motion by his foot, until the varnish is equally diffused all over the inside of them, and becomes dry. Sometimes he adds to the essence some red, yellow, or blue colour; but as this is a deviation from nature, it is not accounted a beauty. To give these tender globules more solidity and strength, they are filled with white wax. They are then bored through with a needle, and threaded in strings for sale. The holes in the finer sort, however, are first lined with thin paper, that the thread may not adhere to the wax[785].

The name able, or ablette, is given to several species of fish; but that which produces the pearl-essence is the Cyprinus alburnus, called in English the bleak. Professor Hermann, at Strasburg, was so kind as to send me one of these fish, which was caught there for the purpose of making pearl-essence, and which was dried so carefully that the species could with certainty be distinguished. It corresponded exactly with the figure given in Duhamel[786], which has almost a perfect resemblance to that given by Schoneveld[787]. May not the alburnus mentioned by Ausonius among the inhabitants of the Moselle, be the same? At any rate, the bleak is to be found only in fresh water; and on account of its voracity bites readily at the hook. It is caught for the use of the French manufacturers in the Seine, the Loire, the Saone, the Rhine[788], and several other rivers. To obtain a pound of scales above 4000 fish are necessary; and these do not produce four ounces of pearl essence; so that from eighteen to twenty thousand are requisite to have a pound of it. In the Chalonnois, the fishermen get for a pound of washed scales fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-five livres. The fish, which are four inches in length, and which have not a very good taste, are sold at a cheap rate, after their scales have been scraped off. At St. John de Maizel, or Mezel, in the Chalonnois, there was a manufactory in which 10,000 pearls were made daily[789].

The first makers of these pearls must have laboured under a very great inconvenience, as they were acquainted with no method of preserving the fishy particles for any time. They were obliged to use the essence immediately, because it soon putrefied and contracted an intolerable stench. The great consumption, however, required that the scales should be brought from distant provinces. Attempts were made to preserve them in spirit of wine or brandy; but these liquors destroyed their lustre, and left them only a dull white colour. In the like manner brandy spoiled a real pearl, which, with the animal and the shell (Mactra lutraria), was sent to me by Dr. Taube, at Zell. It was therefore a very important discovery for this art that these animal particles can be kept for a long time in solution of ammonia, which is now alone used, and which perhaps could be used for many other purposes of the like kind.

That the inventor of these pearls was called Jaquin, and that he was a bead-maker at Paris, all agree; but the time of the invention seems to be uncertain. Some say that it belongs to the reign of Henry IV.[790]; and Reaumur mentions the year 1656. These pearls, however, in the year 1686, when Jaquin had an assistant named Breton, must not have been very common; for we are told in the Mercure Galant of that year, that a marquis possessed of very little property, who was enamoured of a lady, gained her affections and carried his point by presenting her with a string of them, which cost only three louis; and which she, considering them as real ones, valued at 2000 francs. The servant who put the marquis on this stratagem, declared that these pearls withstood heat and the moisture occasioned by perspiration; that they were not easily scratched, had almost the same weight as real ones, and that the person who sold them warranted their durability in writing. Jewellers and pawnbrokers have, therefore, been often deceived by them. Jaquin’s heirs continued this business down to a late period, and had a considerable manufactory au Rue de Petit Lion at Paris.

FOOTNOTES

[757] It was because pearls are calcareous that Cleopatra was able to dissolve hers in vinegar, and by these means to gain a bet from her lover, as we are told by Pliny, 1. ix. c. 35, and Macrobius Saturn. 1. ii. c. 13. She must, however, have employed stronger vinegar than that which we use for our tables, as pearls, on account of their hardness and their natural enamel, cannot be easily dissolved by a weak acid. Nature has secured the teeth of animals against the effects of acids, by an enamel covering which answers the same purpose; but if this enamel happen to be injured only in one small place, the teeth soon spoil and rot. Cleopatra perhaps broke and pounded the pearls; and it is probable that she afterwards diluted the vinegar with water, that she might be able to drink it; though dissolved calcareous matter neutralizes acids and renders them imperceptible to the tongue. We are told that the dissipated Clodius gave to each of his guests a pearl dissolved in vinegar to drink:--“Ut experiretur in gloria palati,” says Pliny, “quid saperent margaritæ; atque ut mire placuere, ne solus hoc sciret, singulos uniones convivis absorbendos dedit.” Horace, lib. ii. sat. 3, says the same. That pearls are soluble in vinegar is remarked in Pausanias, b. viii. ch. 18, and Vitruvius, b. viii. ch. 3.Return to passage

[758] That pearls are not peculiar to one kind of shell-fish, as many believe, was known to Pliny. I have a number of very good pearls which were found by my brother in Colchester oysters. It is more worthy of remark, and less known, that real pearls are found under the shield of the sea-hare, (Aplysia), as has been observed by Bohadsch in his book De Animalibus Marinis, Dresdæ, 1761, 4to, p. 39.Return to passage

[759] In the time of Job, pearls were accounted to be of great value. Job, chap. xxviii. ver. 18.Return to passage

[760] [When the surface of pearl is examined with a microscope, it is found to be indented by a large number of delicate grooves, which by their effect upon the light give rise to the play of colours; and if impressions of them be taken upon wax, fusible metal, lead, balsam of Tolu, &c., the impressed surface exhibits the prismatic colours in the same manner as the pearl. This principle has been applied by Mr. Barton and others to the making of ornaments, in the form of buttons, artificial jewels, &c., by grooving the surface of steel with a very fine cutting machine. The theory of the production of the colours is this: the surfaces of the grooves, from their varied inclinations, reflect the incident white light at various angles, hence the correspondence of the luminous undulations is interrupted and some of them check or interfere with one another, others continue their course. Now, ordinary white light being a mixture of coloured rays, when some of these are checked or interfered with in their progress, the remainder continue their course and appear of that colour which results from the ocular impression communicated by them.]Return to passage

[761] [One of the most remarkable pearls of which we have any authentic account, was bought by Tavernier at Catifa in Arabia, a fishery famous in the days of Pliny, for the enormous sum of £110,000. It is pear-shaped, regular, and without blemish. It is rather more than half an inch in diameter at the largest part, and from two to three inches in length.--Waterston’s Encyclopædia of Commerce.]Return to passage

[762] Philostrat. in Vita Apollon. lib. iii. cap. 57, edit. Olearii, p. 139. Conrade Gesner, in his Hist. Nat. lib. iv. p. 634, gives a more correct translation of the passage.Return to passage

[763] Tsetzes Variorum, lib. ii. segm. 373.Return to passage

[764] See Dr. Joh. Mayer’s Bemerkungen, in the fourth part of Abhandlungen einer Privatgesellschaft in Böhmen, p. 165.Return to passage

[765] Abhand. der Schwed. Akadem. der Wissenschaften, vol. xxxiv. p. 89. The author of the paper alluded to had a mussel with such artificial pearls, which had been brought from China. It was a Mytilus cygneus, the swan-mussel, or great horse-mussel. Mention is made also in Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris, année 1769, of a stone covered with a pearly substance which was found in a mussel.Return to passage

[766] A kind of cockles.Return to passage

[767] J. C. Fabricius Briefe aus London, Dessau, 1784, 8vo, p. 104.Return to passage

[768] See Schlözer’s Briefwechsel, number 40, p. 251.Return to passage

[769] Dr. Stœver, in his Life of Linnæus, vol. i. p. 360, says that the manuscript containing this secret was in the possession of Dr. J. E. Smith, at London.--TRANS.Return to passage

[770] In his Letters, p. 104.Return to passage

[771] This pretty plant, named after the father of botany, grows in Northumberland and some woods in Scotland, also in Switzerland, Siberia, and Canada, but particularly in Norway and Sweden, in shady places amidst the thick woods. The flowers, which appear in May, June and July, are shaped like a bell, rose-coloured without, yellowish in the inside, and somewhat hairy. They have a pleasant smell, especially in the evening. In Tronheim and the neighbouring parts they are drunk as tea for medicinal purposes.Return to passage

[772] Pearl. An excrescence on the inside of a shell when the outer side has been perforated.Return to passage

[773] See Chemnitz’s theory of the origin of pearls, in the Beschäftigungen der Berlin. Naturforsch. Gesellschaft, i. p. 348.Return to passage

[774] The animal part is rendered evident on distillation by the evolution of an ammoniacal odour and a somewhat inflammable oil; and on solution in muriatic acid the animal substance is left behind.Return to passage

[775] Abhand. der Schwed. Akad. iv. p. 245, and xxi. p. 142.Return to passage

[776] Fabricius, in his Letters, p. 105, mentions such an experiment, which was however continued only for a year.Return to passage

[777] Exercitatio Anatom. de Cochleis. Lond. 1694, p. 183.Return to passage

[778] This manner of preparing margaritini may be seen in my Anleitung zur Technologie, p. 307.Return to passage

[779] Massarii in Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. ix. Castigationes. Bas. 1537, 4to, cap. 35.Return to passage

[780] Mercati Metallotheca, p. 211.Return to passage

[781] These silver-coloured particles were examined by Reaumur, who gave a description of them in Histoire de l’Académie, année 1716, p. 229. [In the scales of fishes, the optical effect is produced in the same manner as in the real pearl, the grooves of the latter being represented by the inequalities formed by the margins of the concentric laminæ of which the scales are composed.]Return to passage

[782] The artist no doubt had in view eastern pearls.Return to passage

[783] Girasol. This word, which is wanting in most dictionaries, signifies opal, and sometimes that stone called cat’s-eye, Silex catophthalmus, pseudopalus, &c. Couleur de girasol is applied to semitransparent milk-white porcelain.Return to passage

[784] Coques de perles are flat on one side, and are used for ornaments, one side of which only is seen. By Pliny they are called physemata. Artificial pearls of this kind have, for some time past, been employed in making ear-rings. Our toymen, after the French, give these pearls the name of perles coques; but the following account of Pouget in Traité des Pierres Précieuses, Paris 1762, i. p. 20, makes me dubious respecting them. “La coque de perle,” says he, “is not formed in a pearl-shell like the pearl; it is procured from a kind of snail found only in the East Indies. There are several species of them. The shell of this animal is sawn in two, and one coque only can be obtained from each. The coques are very small, and one is obliged to fill them with tears of mastic to give them a body, before they can be employed. This beautiful snail is found generally in the sea, and sometimes on the shore.” May not Pouget here mean that kind of snail which others call burgeau, the shells of which are, in commerce, known by the French under the name of burgaudines? Should that be the case, the animal meant would be the Nautilus Pompilius, as may be concluded from Histoire des Antilles, par Du Tertre, ii. p. 239. For the author says, “C’est de leur coque que les ouvriers en nacre tirent cette belle nacre qu’ils appellent la burgaudine, plus estimée que la nacre de perle.” Irregular pearls are called baroques, or Scotch pearls, because abundance of such were once found at Perth in Scotland. Some years ago artificial pearls of an unnatural size, called Scotch pearls, were for a little time in fashion.Return to passage

[785] A complete account of the art of making glass pearls is contained in a book, which I have however not seen, entitled, L’Art d’imiter les perles fines, par M. Varenne de Beost. An extract from it may be found in Dictionnaire des Arts et Métiers, par M. Joubert, iii. p. 370. See also the articles perle and able in the Encyclopédie, i. p. 29; xii. p. 382.Return to passage

[786] Traité Générale des Pesches, par. ii. p. 403, tab. 23, fig. 1 et 2.Return to passage

[787] Ichthyologia, Hamb. 1624, 4to, p. 12, tab. 1, fig. 2, albula.Return to passage

[788] In the Almanach de Strasburg for 1780, p. 76, among the commodities sold there were, Des écailles d’ablettes dont on tire l’essence d’orient employée pour les fausses perles.Return to passage

[789] Déscription Hist. et Topogr. du Duché de Bourgogne, par M. Courtépée, tom. iv. A Dijon, 1779, 8vo, p. 534.Return to passage

[790] Pouget. 4to, i. p. 19.Return to passage

PAVING OF STREETS

The most beneficial regulations of police, which we have inherited from our ancestors, are at present considered to be so indispensable or necessary, that many people imagine they must at all times have existed. If one, however, takes the trouble to inquire into the antiquity of these regulations, it will be found that the greater part of them are new, and that they were unknown to the largest and most magnificent cities of ancient times. Among these are posts[791], the night-watch, hackney coaches, and, besides many others, the paving of streets.

Several cities, indeed, had paved streets before the beginning of the Christian æra; but those which are at present the ornament of Europe, Rome excepted, were all destitute of this great advantage, till almost the twelfth or thirteenth century. I must nevertheless acknowledge, that in the Greek and Roman authors I have hitherto met with more proofs of paved highways than of paved streets. But we have reason to believe that the richest nations paid attention to the streets before their doors, sooner than to the roads before their gates. In all probability, the former were paved at different times, and by private persons; and required so little expense and so few regulations, that no occasion was given to remark the time when it was done. On the other hand, for the constructing of highways many miles in length, the concurrence of states, and the consent and assistance of all the inhabitants, were necessary; and, on that account, such circumstances were inserted in annals, and they were sometimes copied afterwards by historians, and mentioned in their works. In the East, where the roads are not spoiled, as among us, by snow, ice, and rain, and where many cities were built on eminences and in dry situations, the paving of streets and highways may have been later thought of than might be expected, when we consider the refinement of the ancient people who inhabited that country, and the progress they had made in the arts. Such undertakings also were often retarded by the want of stone; an obstacle which many nations overcame with an ingenuity and patience at which we, among whom workmen are fewer, and the price of labour higher, because we have more wants, and enjoy more liberty, are not a little astonished. It is however to be conjectured, that those people who first carried on the greatest trade were the first who paid attention to have good streets and highways, in order to facilitate intercourse, so necessary to keep up the spirit of commerce.

This conjecture is in some measure confirmed by the testimony of Isidorus[792], who says that the Carthaginians had the first paved streets, and that their example was soon copied by the Romans. Long before that period, however, Semiramis paved highways, as we are told by the vain-glorious inscription which she herself caused to be put up[793]. Of the paving of the Grecian cities I know nothing further than that at Thebes the streets were under the inspection of the telearchs, who had the care of keeping them in repair, and of cleaning them. This office, which was there held in contempt, the spiteful inhabitants conferred upon Epaminondas, in order to disgrace him; but, by his prudence and attention to the public good, he rendered it so respectable, that it was afterwards sought for as an honourable employment. The streets of Thebes, therefore, were paved, else how would it have been possible to clean them[794]? Whether Jerusalem was paved I do not know; for, in the first book of Kings mention is made only of the fore-court of the temple[795]. Josephus[796] relates that the Jews proposed to Agrippa, after the building of the temple was finished, to employ the workmen who had been discharged, the number of whom, with Jewish exaggeration, he makes amount to eighteen thousand, in paving the streets; this however was not done. We read in the Talmud[797], that the streets of Jerusalem were swept every day, which undoubtedly implies a hard and solid pavement.

That neither the streets of Rome nor the roads around it were paved during the time of its kings, is well known[798]. In the year 188, after the abolition of the monarchical form of government, Appius Claudius, who was then censor, constructed the first real highway, which was as properly called after him the Appian Way, as it was named on account of its excellence the queen of roads[799]. The time however when the streets began to be paved, cannot with certainty be determined; for the passage of Livy[800], from which some have endeavoured to prove that it was in the year 578 after the building of the city, is inconclusive, as it will admit of various explanations equally probable. It may be read, without forcing the sense, as if Livy said that the pavement of the streets was then covered with sand for the first time; that the streets were then first paved at the public expense, or that the paving of them was then performed for the first time by contract. Besides, we are told by Livy himself[801], that the censors in the year of the city 584 caused the streets to be paved from the Oxen-market (Forum Boarium) to the temple of Venus, and around the seats of the magistrates in the great circus: but the information of the same historian that the ædiles in the year 459 caused the streets to be paved from the temple of Mars to the Bovile, and from the Capena gate to the temple of Mars[802], does not apply here, as some have imagined; for the temple of Mars was without the city, and the author speaks not of streets, but of highways. The extravagant Heliogabalus caused the streets around the palace, or on the Palatine mount, to be paved with foreign marble[803]. The inspection of the streets belonged to the ædiles; and, under certain circumstances, occasionally to the censors. In the course of time, however, particular officers, curatores viarum, called on account of their number quatuor viri viarum, were appointed for that express purpose. Thus we are told that the two brothers, Publii Malleoli, when curule ædiles, caused the Mons Publicius to be paved, so that carriages could pass from the street Velia to Mount Aventine[804]. That streets paved with lava, having deep ruts made by the wheels of carriages, and raised banks on each side for the accommodation of foot-passengers, were found both at Herculaneum and Pompeii, is well known from the information of various travellers.

Of modern cities, the oldest pavement is commonly ascribed to that of Paris; but it is certain that Cordova in Spain was paved so early as the middle of the ninth century, or about the year 850, by Abdorrahman II., the fourth Spanish caliph. This prince, who knew the value of the arts and sciences, and who favoured trade so much that abundance in his reign prevailed throughout the whole land[805], caused water to be conveyed into that city, which was then his capital, by leaden pipes, and ornamented it with a mosque and other elegant buildings[806].

The capital of France was not paved in the twelfth century; for Rigord, the physician and historian of Philip II., relates, that the king standing one day at a window of his palace near the Seine, and observing that the carriages which passed threw up the dirt in such a manner that it produced a most offensive stench, his majesty resolved to remedy this intolerable nuisance by causing the streets to be paved; which was accordingly done, notwithstanding the heavy expense that had prevented his predecessors from introducing the same improvement. The orders for this purpose were issued by the government in the year 1184; and upon that occasion, as is said, the name of the city, which was then called Lutetia on account of its dirtiness, was changed to that of Paris[807]. This service rendered to Paris by that sovereign, who first also caused the cathedral to be surrounded by a wall, is confirmed by various historians[808]. Mezeray informs us, that Gerard de Poissy, then intendant of the finances, expended eleven thousand marks of silver in this undertaking. It appears that a certain income was allowed to the city for defraying the expenses; for in 1285, a hundred years after, when it was proposed that the pavement should be carried without the gate of St. Martin, the citizens excused themselves from the work, by saying that the funds assigned to them were not sufficient for that purpose[809]. It is certain, that in the year 1641 the streets in many quarters of Paris were not paved[810].

It is very probable that other opulent cities, finding the benefit which the capital derived from this improvement, were induced to follow its example. At any rate we know that Dijon, which was then reckoned one of the most beautiful, had paved streets so early as the year 1391, to which Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy, the second husband of Margaret heiress of Flanders and other parts of the Netherlands, contributed two thousand livres; and in 1424 paviors were employed on all the streets[811]. Historians remark, that after this period, dangerous diseases, such as the dysentery, spotted fever and others, became less frequent in that city.

That the streets of London were not paved at the end of the eleventh century, is asserted by all historians. As a proof of this, they relate that in the year 1090, when the church of St. Mary-le-Bow, in Cheapside, was unroofed by a violent storm of wind, four pillars or beams, which were twenty-six feet in length, sunk so deep into the ground, that scarcely four feet of them appeared above the surface. The streets of London then, says Howel, were not paved, but consisted of soft earth[812]. I can however find no account of the time when paving was first introduced. It appears that the pavement of this immense city became gradually extended as trade and opulence increased. Several of the principal streets, such as Holborn, which at present are in the middle of the city, were paved for the first time by royal command in the year 1417[813]. Others were paved under Henry VIII., some in the suburbs[814] in 1544, others in 1571 and 1605, and the great market of Smithfield, where cattle are sold, was first paved in 1614[815].

Of German cities I can mention only Augsburg, which by its trade soon rose to such eminence as to be able to rival magnificent Rome, of which it was a colony, in many expensive improvements. This city from the earliest periods had small subterranean passages under the streets for conveying away filth, which in some measure resembled the Roman cloacæ. Hans Gwerlich, a rich merchant there, having caused a neat foot-path to be made before his house in the oxen-market in 1415, gave rise to the paving of the city; for this convenience was so much admired, that after that time all the streets were paved successively at the expense of the government. Berlin, in the first half of the seventeenth century, was not entirely paved. The new market was first paved in 1679 and the following years, and King-street before the houses in 1684. The square behind the cathedral and before the present tilt-yard remained without pavement in 1679.

When a solid bottom had been given to streets, the cleansing of them, which, as the Roman prætors said, is a continual improvement[816], was then rendered possible. At Rome were appointed tribuni rerum nitentium, who had the care of cleaning the streets, markets, temples, baths and other public places[817]. Strict orders were given that no filth should be thrown into the river or streets; whoever transgressed against this prohibition was subjected to punishment, and obliged to repair the damage[818]. The public sewers, cloacæ, under the streets contributed very much to facilitate the cleaning of them, yet they were commonly full of mud[819], as those of Paris are at present, notwithstanding the many expensive regulations established to prevent that nuisance.

Some centuries after Paris was paved, every citizen was obliged to repair the street before his house, and to clean it at his own expense, as is expressly commanded in an order issued by Philip the Bold[820], in the year 1285. The public however are often careless and negligent respecting the most beneficial regulations, when the maintaining of them is attended with trouble and expense, be it ever so small. By this want of attention, all the streets of Paris were in the fourteenth century entirely spoiled and filled with dirt; but they were again repaired; and in 1348 a law was first made for inflicting punishment upon those who neglected to clean them[821]. This law was rendered more severe in 1388, and several times afterwards. The novelty of it, the dread of punishment, and the vigilance of the new inspectors, produced such an effect, that the inhabitants of one or more neighbouring streets joined together and kept at their common expense a dirt-cart, which at that time was called un tombereau; but the nobility and the clergy, who always wish for immunities, endeavoured to exempt themselves from this burthen. The markets and public squares remained therefore uncleaned, and became still dirtier, as those who resided in the neighbourhood began to throw filth into them privately in the night-time, in order to avoid the expense of having it carried away, till at length these places were rendered so impassable that the toymen who frequented them with their wares wished to abandon them. For this reason it was enacted in the year 1399, that no one should be exempted from cleaning the streets; and an order was issued in 1374, that all those who lived in the markets, together with the toymen who had booths there, should clean them at their joint expenses[822]. Many now made the removing of dirt a trade, and entered into contracts for that purpose; but they as well as the paviors turned so extravagant in their demands, that a price was set upon the labour of the former in 1396, and the latter in 1501 were united into a company, every member of which was obliged to subscribe to certain regulations[823].

When the city at length increased in size and population, the cleaning of the streets became too troublesome and expensive to be left any longer to the care of individuals. Besides, those who inhabited the suburbs complained, and with great justice, that the burthen lay so heavy upon them as to be intolerable; because all the carts which entered the city, or which conveyed filth from it, rendered their streets much dirtier than the rest. It was resolved therefore, in the year 1609, that the streets should be cleaned at the public expense, under the inspection of the police; and a certain revenue in wine was set apart for that purpose. The first person with whom a contract was entered into for this service, was allowed yearly, for cleaning the whole city, 70,000 livres, which sum was raised in 1628 to 80,000[824]. In 1704, the Parisians were obliged to collect 300,000 livres, for which Government undertook to maintain the lamps and clean the streets; but in 1722 this contribution was increased to 450,000. The last contract with which I am acquainted is that of the year 1748, by which the contractors were to be allowed yearly, during six years, for removing the dirt, 200,000 livres, and for clearing away the snow and ice in winter 6000 more, making in all the sum of 206,000 livres[825].

All these regulations and expenses however would undoubtedly have been attended with very little benefit, had not deliberate dirtying of the streets been strictly prohibited, and all opportunities of doing so been as much as possible prevented. As the young king Philip, whom his father Louis the Fat had united with himself as co-regent, and caused to be crowned at Rheims, was passing St. Gervais on horseback, a sow running against his horse’s legs made him stumble, and the prince being thrown was so much hurt, that he died next morning, 3rd October 1131. On account of this accident an order was issued that no swine in future should be suffered to run about in the streets; but this was opposed by the abbey of St. Anthony, because, as the monks represented, it was contrary to the respect due to their patron to prevent his swine from enjoying the liberty of going where they thought proper. It was found necessary therefore to grant these clergy an exclusive privilege, and to allow their swine, if they had bells fastened to their necks, to wallow in the dirt of the streets without molestation[826].

A very improper liberty prevailed at Paris in the fourteenth century, which was, that all persons might throw anything from their windows whenever they chose, provided they gave notice three times before, by crying out Gare l’eau, which is as much as to say, Take care of water. This privilege was forbidden in 1372, and still more severely in 1395[827]. A like practice however seems to have continued longer at Edinburgh; for in the year 1750, when people went out into the streets at night, it was necessary, in order to avoid disagreeable accidents from the windows, that they should take with them a guide, who as he went along called out with a loud voice, in the Scotch dialect, Haud your haunde, Stop your hand[828].

This practice however would not have been suppressed at Paris, had not the police paid particular attention to promote the interior cleanliness of the houses, and the erection of privies. Some will perhaps be astonished that these conveniences should have been first introduced into the capital of France by an order from government in the sixteenth century; especially as they are at present considered to be so indispensably necessary, that few summer-houses are constructed without them. Those however to whom this affords matter of surprise must be still more astonished when they are told that the residence of the king of Spain was destitute of this improvement at the very time that the English circumnavigators found privies constructed in the European manner near the habitations of the cannibals of New Zealand[829]. But Madrid is not the royal residence which has had dirty streets longest on account of this want. Privies began to be erected at Warsaw for the first time only within these few years[830].

In the Parisian code of laws, Coûtume de Paris, which was improved and confirmed in 1513, it is expressly ordered, that every house should have a privy[831]. This order, with the denunciation of severer punishment in case of disobedience, was renewed in 1533; and in 1538 the under officers of police were obliged to examine the houses and to report the names of those who had not complied with this beneficial regulation. It appears, however, that the order of 1533 was not the latest; for in 1697, and even in 1700, the police was under the necessity of strictly commanding “that people should construct privies in their houses, and repair those already constructed, and that within a month at furthest, under the penalty of being fined in case of neglect, and of having their houses shut up until they should be in a proper condition.” This order is given in the same words in the Coûtume de Mante, Etampes, Nivernois, Bourbonnois, Calais, Tournay, and Melun[832]. That issued at Bordeaux is of the year 1585.

All these regulations of police were not much older in Germany than in Paris. The cleaning of the streets was considered there as an almost dishonourable employment, which in some places was assigned to the Jews, and in others to the executioner’s servants. The Jews were obliged to clean the streets of Hamburgh before the present regulations were established. How old these may be I do not know, but in the year 1585 there were dirt carts in that city, and a tax was paid by the inhabitants for supporting them. At Spandau, in 1573, the skinners were obliged to sweep the market-place, which was not then paved, and for this service they were paid by the council[833]. In the beginning of the seventeenth century the streets of Berlin were never swept, and the swine belonging to the citizens wallowed in the increasing dirt the whole day, as well as in the kennels, which were choked up with mud. In the year 1624, when the elector desired the council to order the streets to be cleaned, they replied, that it would then be of no use, as the citizens at that time were busy with their farms. Near Peter’s church there was a heap of dust so large that it almost prevented people from passing, and it was with great difficulty, and not until strict orders had been often repeated, that the elector could get the inhabitants to remove it. For a long time dirt of every kind was emptied in the new market-place, and lay there in such quantity, that an order was issued in 1671, that every countryman who came to the market should carry back with him a load of dirt. The director of the public mill made continual complaints, that, by the dirt being shot down near the long bridge, the mill-dam was prevented from flowing. Hog-sties were erected in the streets, sometimes even under the windows. This practice was forbidden by the council in 1641[834]; but it was nevertheless continued, until the elector at length, in the year 1681, gave orders that the inhabitants should not feed swine; and this prohibition was carried into effect without any exception, as St. Anthony had no abbeys at Berlin. Privies, however, seem to have been common in the large and flourishing towns of Germany much earlier than in the capital of France; and those who are not disposed to find fault with me for introducing proofs here which historians have not disdained to record, may read what follows[835]:--In the annals of Frankfort on the Maine, where mention is made of the cheapness of former times, we are told how much a citizen there gave in the year 1477 for cleaning his privy[836]. We are informed also, that in 1496 an order was issued by the council forbidding the proprietors of houses situated in a certain place planted with trees to erect privies towards the side where the trees were growing; and that in 1498, George Pfeffer von Hell, J.U.D. and chancellor of the electorate of Mentz, fell by accident into a privy, and there perished. It appears however from the streets and houses of most of our cities, that they were constructed before such conveniences were thought of, and that these were erected through force at a later period[837].

[A new era in paving has been commenced by the substitution of wood for stone, but unfortunately, its vast superiority in some respects is nearly if not quite counterbalanced by its defects, so that it will probably be laid aside. An imperfect kind of wooden pavement has been much used in North America, and is known by the name of corduroy road; but the wooden pavement, properly so called, seems to have been first used in Russia, and within the last few years, on a small scale at Vienna, New York, &c. Its use in London was first suggested by Mr. Finlayson in 1825. It was originally formed of hexagonal prismatic pieces of wood, the grain of which was placed vertically. The blocks have been kept together in various ways, some by mere position, others by wooden pegs, strong iron wire, &c. The great disadvantage of wooden pavement is that it becomes slippery in wet weather. Attempts have been made to remedy this defect, by raising those in the centre above the level of the lateral ones, or grooving the surfaces of the blocks. Another objection to wooden pavement is the difficulty of laying a firm and durable foundation. The retention of water by the spaces left between the blocks and in the pores of the wood itself, whereby an atmosphere of moisture is continually preserved, has also been considered as likely to predispose to certain diseases. Whether the latter is true or not, the short duration of their adoption has hardly afforded sufficient opportunities of deciding. The checking of the vibrations communicated from vehicles constantly running in the streets, renders the wooden pavement of extreme value; its durability has also been stated on good authority to exceed that of stone, and its expense to be less. In these particulars however it has not answered expectation; and from the immense number of horses which are daily thrown down, from the want of resisting points on its surface, its use will probably be abandoned; and in several of the large thoroughfares where it had been adopted it is now being replaced by stone.

A very valuable material for the formation of foot-pavements has been found and patented in asphalte. That which has been most used for this purpose is the native asphalte from Seyssel; it is mixed with a small quantity of native bitumen and sand. In preparing it, 93 parts of native asphalte are reduced to powder and seven of bitumen; these are melted together and fine gravel or sand stirred in the mixture. It is then spread upon a concrete foundation in layers about an inch in thickness. Its elasticity renders it exceedingly durable. Various compositions have been substituted for this mixture, but we believe none have been found to answer so well. The application of bituminous substances to carriage-pavements has been almost exclusively limited to court-yards, but there is very good evidence of its applicability to public thoroughfares, in a piece of pavement, about 150 feet in length by 10 feet in width, laid down in 1838 at Whitehall, as a sample of Messrs. Claridge’s patent. It still remains in perfect condition. The principal objection to the general adoption of asphaltic pavement in the streets of London, appears to be the difficulty of raising and relaying it, a process so constantly required to reach the innumerable gas and water-pipes beneath.

Pavements have been laid down, especially in court-yards and stables, one of the principal constituents of which is caoutchouc.]

FOOTNOTES

[791] I reckon the post among police regulations, to which its object originally belonged, as well as that of the coining of money; though in the course of time it has been made a productive source of revenue, by which it has been rendered burdensome to the public, while its utility has been lessened.Return to passage

[792] Origin. lib. xv. cap. 16.Return to passage

[793] Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 1071. Diodor. Sic. lib. ii. cap. 13. Polyæni Stratagem. lib. viii. cap. 26.Return to passage

[794] Valerius Max. lib. iii. cap. 7. Plutarch. Reipublicæ Gerendæ Præcepta, p. 811.Return to passage

[795] 1 Kings, chap. vii. ver. 12.Return to passage

[796] Antiquit. lib. xx. cap. 9.Return to passage

[797] Pesachim, fol. 71. Metzia, fol. 26.Return to passage

[798] Bergier, Hist. des Grands Chemins Rom. liv. i. chap. viii.Return to passage

[799] Statius, Sylv. ii. 2, v. 12.Return to passage

[800] Lib. xli. cap. 27.Return to passage

[801] Lib. xxix. cap. 37.Return to passage

[802] Lib. x. cap. 23. Equally inapplicable are the passages lib. xxxviii. cap. 28, and lib. x. cap. 47.Return to passage

[803] Æl. Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 24.Return to passage

[804] Ovid. Fastor. lib. v. ver. 293. See also Marc. Varro, lib. iv. de L. L. Festus, p. 310. An examination of the question whether the ædiles or censors had the inspection of the streets may be found in Ducker’s notes on Liv. lib. x. cap. 32 (edit. Drakenborchii).Return to passage

[805] Cardonne Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne sous les Arabes, 3 vols. 12mo, Par. 1765. Translated into German, with notes, by Dr. Murr. Nurnb. 1768, i. p. 187.Return to passage

[806] Rod. Ximenez, archiep. Toletani, Historia Arabum, cap. xxvi. p. 23. Printed at the end of Erpenius’ Historia Saracenica, 4to. Lugd. 1625.Return to passage

[807] Rigordus De Gestis Phil. Augusti, in Duchesne Hist. Script. Franc. Par. 1649, fol. p. 16.Return to passage

[808] Gulielmi Armorici Hist. de Vita Phil. Augusti, in Duchesne, p. 73. Alberici Monachi Trium Fontium Chronicon, ed. a G. G. Leibnitio, Lips. 1698, 4to, p. 367.Return to passage

[809] Felibien, Hist. de Paris, i. p. 104.Return to passage

[810] A proof of this may be seen in De la Mare, iv. p. 197, who gives the best account respecting the regulations made to keep in repair the pavement of the streets of Paris. The later regulations are given by Perrot in Dictionnaire de Voierie, Paris, 1782, 4to, p. 315.Return to passage

[811] Courtepée Description du Duché de Bourgogne, i. p. 233, and ii. p. 62.Return to passage

[812] Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, vol. i. p. 483.Return to passage

[813] In the king’s order it was said, that the highway named Holbourn in London was so deep and miry, that many perils and hazards were thereby occasioned as well to the king’s carriages passing that way as to those of his subjects; he therefore ordained two vessels, each of twenty tons burthen, to be employed at his expense, for bringing stones for paving and mending the same.--Anderson’s Hist. of Com. i. p. 244.Return to passage

[814] In this order the streets were described “as very foul, and full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and (noyous) noisome, as well for the king’s subjects on horseback as on foot, and with carriage.”--Anderson, ut supra, p. 370.Return to passage

[815] Anderson, i. p. 491. Northouck’s History of London, 1773, 4to, p. 121. 217. 414. 436.Return to passage

[816] Digest. lib. xliii. tit. 2.Return to passage

[817] Notitia utraque dignitatum, Pancirolli. Lugd. 1608.--Notit. Imperii Occident. cap. 19. This work may be found in Grævii Thes. Antiq. Rom. vol. vii.Return to passage

[818] Digestorum lib. xliii. tit. 12, and lib. ix. tit. 3.Return to passage

[819] Martial, Epig. vii. 61. Juvenal, sat. iii. ver. 247.Return to passage

[820] A full history of the regulations made respecting the cleaning of the streets of Paris may be found in De la Mare, iv. p. 200.Return to passage

[821] De la Mare, iv. p. 202.Return to passage

[822] Ibid. iv. p. 172, 203.Return to passage

[823] De la Mare, p. 205.Return to passage

[824] Ibid. iv. p. 216, 239, 243.Return to passage

[825] This contract is inserted in Perrot, Dictionnaire de Voierie, p. 305. In 1445 six carts were employed at Dijon in cleaning the streets.Return to passage

[826] Histoire de la Ville de Paris, par Sauval, vol. ii. p. 640.Return to passage

[827] De la Mare, iv. p. 253. Perrot, p. 307.Return to passage

[828] Letters from Scotland, 1760, 2 vols. 8vo. [At this period, when the luxury of water-closets was unknown, it was a custom for men to perambulate the streets of Edinburgh, carrying conveniences (pails) suspended from a yoke on their shoulders, enveloped by cloaks sufficiently large to cover both their apparatus and customers, crying, “Wha wants me, for a bawbee?” It has since been used against the Edinburgh people as a joke or satire upon an ancient custom. By way of a set-off, however, it may be observed that at the present day there is a water-closet in almost every house in Edinburgh.]Return to passage

[829] Cook’s First Voyage, 4to, vol. ii. p. 281.Return to passage

[830] Whoever wishes to enter deeper into the history of this family convenience, certainly an object of police, the improvement of which the Academy of Sciences at Paris did not think below its notice, may consult the following work, Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, Inscriptions, Belles Lettres, Beaux Arts, etc. nouvellement établie à Troyes en Champagne. A Troyes et Paris 1756. The author, who by this piece of ridicule wished, perhaps, to avenge himself of some academy which did not admit him as a member, has collected from the Greek and Latin writers abundance of dirty passages respecting this question: “Si l’usage de chier en plein air étoit universel chez les anciens peuples.” He proves from a passage of Aristophanes, Ecclesiaz. ver. 1050, that the Greeks had privies in their houses.Return to passage

[831] De la Mare, i. p. 568, and iv. p. 254. “Tous propriétaires de maisons de la ville et fauxbourgs de Paris sont tenus avoir latrines et privez suffisans en leurs maisons.” [They should also have been compelled to make use of them.]Return to passage

[832] De la Mare, ut supra.--Coûtume de Mante, art. 107.--Etampes, art. 87.--Nivernois, chap. x. art. 15.--Bourbonnois, art. 515.--Calais, art. 179.--Tournay, tit. 17, art. 5.--Melun, art. 209.Return to passage

[833] Historische Beyträge die Preussischen und benachbarten Staaten betreffend. Berlin, 1784, 4to, iii. p. 373.Return to passage

[834] Nicholai Beschreibung von Berlin, p. 26. The author quotes, from the order published at Berlin, Nov. 30, 1641, respecting the buildings of the city, section fourth, the following words: “Many citizens have presumed to erect hog-sties in the open streets, and often under the windows of bed-chambers, which the council cannot by any means suffer;” and in the seventeenth section hog-sties are forbidden to be erected in future in the small streets near the milk-market.Return to passage

[835] “Frivola hæc fortassis cuipiam et nimis levia esse videantur, sed curiositas nihil recusat.”--Vopiscus in Vita Aureliani, cap. 10.Return to passage

[836] Chronica der Stadt Frankf. von C. A. von Lersner, i. p. 512.Return to passage

[837] [Berlin, strange to say, is very ill circumstanced in respect to these conveniences, even at the present day (1846). In most of the houses, small closets are located on the landings of the stairs, which require to be emptied every other night, to the no great satisfaction of the olfactory nerves. Nor are the streets kept in a very proper state,--large puddles of filth being allowed to collect before the doors even of the best houses, and which, especially in the hot months of summer, diffuse a most horrible stench. Something however must be allowed for the low situation of the town, which renders drainage next to impracticable. Laing, in his Notes of a Traveller, speaking of Berlin as he found it in 1841, says, “It is a fine city, very like the age she represents--very fine and very nasty.... The streets are spacious and straight, with broad margins on each side for foot-passengers; and a band of plain flagstones on these margins make them much more walkable than the streets of most continental towns. But these margins are divided from the spacious carriage-way in the middle by open kennels, telling the nose unutterable things. These open kennels are boarded over only at the gateways of the palaces, to let the carriages cross them, and must be particularly convenient to the inhabitants, for they are not at all particularly agreeable. Use reconciles people to nuisances which might be easily removed. A sluggish but considerable river, the Spree, stagnates through the town, and the money laid out in stucco work and outside decoration of the houses, would go far towards covering over their drains, raising the water by engines and sending it in a purifying stream through every street and sewer. If bronze and marble could smell, Blücher and Bülow, Schwerin and Ziethen, and duck-winged angels, and two-headed eagles innumerable, would be found on their pedestals holding their noses instead of grasping their swords. It is a curious illustration of the difference between the civilization of the fine arts and that of the useful arts, in their influences on social well-being, that Berlin as yet has not advanced so far in the enjoyments and comforts of life, in the civilization of the useful arts, as to have water conveyed in pipes into its city and into its houses. Three hundred thousand people have taste enough to be in die-away ecstasies at the singing of Madame Pasta, or the dancing of Taglioni, and have not taste enough to appreciate or feel the want of a supply of water in their kitchens, sculleries, drains, sewers, and water-closets. The civilization of an English village is, after all, more real civilization than that of Paris or Berlin.”]Return to passage

COLLECTIONS OF NATURAL CURIOSITIES

If it be true that the written accounts which those who had recovered from sickness caused to be drawn out of their cure, their disorder, and the medicines employed to remove it, and to be hung up in the temples, particularly that of Æsculapius, were the first collections of medical observations[838], as seems to appear by the testimony of Hippocrates, who did not disdain to make use of them in order to acquire information[839]; we have every reason to conjecture, that the rare animals, plants and minerals, generally preserved in the temples also, were the first collections of natural curiosities, and that they may have contributed as much to promote the knowledge of natural history, as those tablets to improve the art of medicine. Natural objects of uncommon size or beauty, and other rare productions, on which nature seemed to have exerted her utmost power, were in the earliest periods consecrated to the gods[840]. They were conveyed to the temples, where their value became still enhanced by the sacredness and antiquity of the place; where they continued more and more to excite respect and awaken curiosity, and where they were preserved as memorials to the latest generations, with the same reverence as the other furniture of these buildings. In the course of time these natural curiosities dedicated to the gods became so numerous, that they formed collections which may be called large for those periods, and for the infant state in which natural history then was.

When Hanno returned from his distant voyages, he brought with him to Carthage two skins of the hairy women whom he found on the Gorgades islands, and deposited them as a memorial in the temple of Juno, where they continued till the destruction of the city[841]. The horns of a Scythian animal, in which the Stygian water that destroyed every other vessel could be contained, were sent by Alexander as a curiosity to the temple of Delphi, where they were suspended, with an inscription, which has been preserved by Ælian[842]. The monstrous horns of the wild bulls which had occasioned so much devastation in Macedonia, were by order of king Philip hung up in the temple of Hercules. The unnaturally formed shoulder-bones of Pelops were deposited in the temple of Elis[843]. The horns of the so-called Indian ants were shown in the temple of Hercules at Erythræ[844]; and the crocodile found in attempting to discover the sources of the Nile was preserved in the temple of Isis at Cæsarea[845]. A large piece of the root of the cinnamon-tree was kept in a golden vessel in one of the temples at Rome, where it was examined by Pliny[846]. The skin of that monster which the Roman army in Africa attacked and destroyed, and which probably was a crocodile, an animal common in that country, but never seen by the Romans before the Punic war, was by Regulus sent to Rome, and hung up in one of the temples, where it remained till the time of the Numantine war[847]. In the temple of Juno, in the island of Melita, there were a pair of elephant’s teeth of extraordinary size, which were carried away by Masinissa’s admiral, and transmitted to that prince, who, though he set a high value upon them, sent them back again because he heard they had been taken from a temple[848]. The head of a basilisc was exhibited in one of the temples of Diana[849]; and the bones of that sea-monster, probably a whale, to which Andromeda was exposed, were preserved at Joppa, and afterwards brought to Rome[850]. In the time of Pausanias, the head of the celebrated Calydonian boar was shown in one of the temples of Greece; but it was then destitute of bristles, and had suffered considerably by the hand of time. The monstrous tusks of this animal were brought to Rome, after the defeat of Antony, by the emperor Augustus, who caused them to be suspended in the temple of Bacchus[851]. Apollonius tells us, that he saw in India some of those nuts which in Greece were preserved in the temples as curiosities[852].

It is certain, however, that all these articles, though preserved in the temples of the ancients as rarities or memorials of remarkable events, or as objects calculated to silence unbelief, were not properly kept there for the purpose to which our collections of natural curiosities are applied; but at the same time it must be allowed that they might be of as much utility to naturalists, as the tablets, in which patients who had recovered thanked the gods for their cures, were to physicians.

We are told by Suetonius, that the emperor Augustus had in his palace a collection of natural curiosities[853]. I, however, do not remember that any of the ancient naturalists make mention of their own private collections; though it is well known that Alexander gave orders to all huntsmen, bird-catchers, fishermen and others, to send to Aristotle whatever animals they could procure[854]; and although Pliny was accustomed to make observations on such as he had an opportunity of seeing. No doubt can be entertained that a collection of natural curiosities was formed by Apuleius, who, next to Aristotle and his scholar Theophrastus, certainly examined natural objects with the greatest ardour and judgement; who caused animals of every kind, and particularly fish, to be brought to him either dead or alive, in order to describe their external and internal parts, their number and situation, and to determine their characteristic peculiarities, and assign names to them; who undertook distant journeys to become acquainted with the secrets of nature; and who on the Getulian mountains collected petrifactions, which he considered as the effects of Deucalion’s flood. It is much to be lamented that the zoological works of this learned and ingenious man have been lost.

The principal cause why collections of natural curiosities were scarce in ancient times, must have been the ignorance of naturalists in regard to the proper means of preserving such bodies as soon spoil or corrupt. Some methods were indeed known and practised, but they were all defective and inferior to that by spirit of wine, which prevents putrefaction, and which by its perfect transparency permits objects covered by it to be at all times viewed and examined. These methods were the same as those employed to preserve provisions, or the bodies of great men deceased. They were put into salt brine or honey, or were covered over with wax.

It appears that in the earliest periods bodies were preserved from corruption by means of salt[855], and that this practice was long continued. We are told that Pharnaces caused the body of his father Mithridates to be deposited in salt brine, in order that he might transmit it to Pompey[856]. Eunapius, who lived in the fifth century, relates that the monks preserved the heads of the martyrs by means of salt[857]; and we are informed by Sigebert, who died in 1113, that a like process was pursued with the body of St. Guibert, that it might be kept during a journey in summer[858]. In the same manner the priests preserved the sow which afforded a happy omen to Æneas, by having brought forth a litter of thirty pigs, as we are told by Varro, in whose time the animal was still shown at Lavinium[859]. A hippocentaur (probably a monstrous birth), caught in Arabia, was brought alive to Egypt; and as it died there, it was, after being preserved in salt brine, sent to Rome to the emperor, and deposited in his collection, where it was shown in the time of Pliny, and in that of Phlegon[860]. Another hippocentaur was preserved by the like method, and transmitted to the emperor Constantine at Antioch[861]; and a large ape of the species called Pan, sent by the Indians to the emperor Constantius, happening to die on the road by being shut up in a cage, was placed in salt, and in that manner conveyed to Constantinople[862]. This method of preserving natural objects has been even employed in modern times to prevent large bodies from being affected by corruption. The hippopotamus described by Columna was sent to him from Egypt preserved in salt[863].

To put dead bodies in honey, for the purpose of securing them from putrefaction, is an ancient practice[864], and was used at an early period by the Assyrians[865]. The body of Agesipolis king of Sparta, who died in Macedonia, was sent home in honey[866], as were also the bodies of Agesilaus[867] and Aristobulus[868]. The faithless Cleomenes caused the head of Archonides to be put in honey, and had it always placed near him when he was deliberating upon any affair of great importance, in order to fulfil the oath he had made to undertake nothing without consulting his head[869]. According to the account of some authors, the body of Alexander the Great was deposited in honey[870], though others relate that it was embalmed according to the manner of the Egyptians[871]. The body of the emperor Justin II. was also placed in honey mixed with spices[872]. The wish of Democritus to be buried in honey[873] is likewise a confirmation of this practice. Honey was often applied in ancient times to purposes for which we use sugar. It was employed for preserving fruit[874]; and this process is not disused at present. In order to preserve fresh for many years the celebrated purple dye of the ancients, honey was poured over it[875], and certain worms useful in medicine were kept free from corruption by the like means[876]. By the same method also were natural curiosities preserved, such as the hippocentaur already mentioned; and it has been employed in later times, as is proved by the account given by Alexander ab Alexandro[877], respecting the supposed mermen.

Among the Scythians[878], Assyrians[879], and Persians[880], dead bodies were covered over with wax. That of Agesilaus, because honey could not be procured, was preserved in this manner[881], which indeed ought not to be despised even at present. When the Orientals are desirous of transporting fish to any distance, they cover them over with wax[882]; and the apples carried every year to the northern parts of Siberia and Archangel, from the southern districts of Russia, are first dipped in melted wax, which, by forming a thick coat around them, keeps out the air, and prevents them from spoiling. This property has in my opinion given rise to the ancient custom of wrapping up in wax-cloth the dead bodies of persons of distinction. Linen, or perhaps silk, which had been done over with wax, was used on such occasions, but not what we at present distinguish by the name of wax-cloth, which is only covered with an oil-varnish in imitation of the real kind. The body of St. Ansbert, we are told, was wrapped up linteo cerato; and a camisale ceratum[883] was drawn over the clothes which covered that of St. Udalric. When Philip duke of Burgundy died in 1404, his body was wrapped up in thirty-two ells de toile cirée[884]. In an ancient record, respecting the ceremony to be used in burying the kings of England, it is ordered that the body shall be wrapped up in wax-cloth[885]. In the year 1774, when the grave of king Edward I., who died in 1307, was opened, the body was found so closely wrapped up in wax-cloth, that one could perfectly distinguish the form of the hand, and the features of the countenance[886]. The body of Johanna, mother of Edward the Black Prince, who died in 1359, was also wrapped up in cerecloth; and in like manner the body of Elizabeth Tudor, the second daughter of Henry VII., was cered by the wax-chandler[887]. After the death of George II., the apothecary was allowed one hundred and fifty-two pounds for fine double wax-cloth, and other articles necessary to embalm the body[888]. The books found in the grave of Numa, as we learn from the Roman historians, though they had been buried more than five hundred years, were, when taken up, so entire, that they looked as if perfectly new, because they had been closely surrounded with wax-candles. Wax-cloth it is probable was not then known at Rome[889].

In those centuries usually called the middle ages, I find no traces of collections of this nature, except in the treasuries of emperors, kings and princes, where, besides articles of great value, curiosities of art, antiquities and relics, one sometimes found scarce and singular foreign animals, which were dried and preserved. Such objects were to be seen in the old treasury at Vienna; and in that of St. Denis was exhibited the claw of a griffin, sent by the king of Persia to Charlemagne; the teeth of the hippopotamus, and other things of the like kind[890]. In these collections the number of the rarities always increased in proportion as a taste for natural history became more prevalent, and as the extension of commerce afforded better opportunities for procuring the productions of remote countries. Menageries were established to add to the magnificence of courts, and the stuffed skins of rare animals were hung up as memorials of their having existed. Public libraries also were made receptacles for such natural curiosities as were from time to time presented to them; and as in universities the faculty of medicine had a hall appropriated for the dissection of human bodies, curiosities from the animal kingdom were collected there also by degrees; and it is probable that the professors of anatomy first made attempts to preserve different parts of animals in spirit of wine, as they were obliged to keep them by them for the use of their pupils; and because in old times dead bodies were not given up to them as at present, and were more difficult to be obtained.

At a later period collections of natural curiosities began to be formed by private persons. The object of them at first appears to have been rather to gratify the sight than to improve the understanding; and they contained more rarities of art, valuable pieces of workmanship and antiquities, than productions of nature. It is certain that such collections were first made in places where many families had been enriched without much labour by trade and manufactures, and who, it is likely, might wish to procure to themselves consequence and respect by expending money in this manner. It is not improbable that such collections were formed, though not first, as Stetten thinks[891], at a very early period at Augsburg, and this taste was soon spread into other opulent cities and states.

Private collections, however, appear for the first time in the sixteenth century; and there is no doubt that they were formed by every learned man who at that period applied to the study of natural history. Among these were Hen. Cor. Agrippa of Nettesheim; Nic. Monardes, Paracelsus, Val. Cordus[892], Hier. Cardan, Matthiolus, 1577; Conrad Gesner, George Agricola, 1555[893]; Pet. Bellon, 1564; W. Rondelet, 1566; Thurneisser[894]; Abraham Ortelius, 1598[895]; and many others. That such collections were formed also in England[896] during the above century, is proved by the catalogue which Hakluyt used for his works.

The oldest catalogues of private collections which I remember, are the following: Samuel Quickelberg, a physician from Antwerp, who about the year 1553 resided at Ingolstadt, and was much esteemed by the duke of Bavaria, published in quarto at Munich in 1565, Inscriptiones vel Tituli Theatri Amplissimi, complectentis Rerum Universitatis singulas Materias et Imagines. This pamphlet contained only the plan of a large work, in which he intended to give a description of all the rarities of nature and art. I have never had an opportunity of seeing it. I am acquainted only with a copious extract from it, which induces me to doubt whether Walch was right in giving it out as a catalogue of the author’s collection[897].

The same year, 1565, John Kentmann, a learned physician in Torgau, sent a catalogue of his collection, which consisted principally of minerals and shells, to Conrad Gesner, who caused it to be printed[898]. The order observed in it is principally borrowed from Agricola. This collection, however, was not extensive. It was contained in a cabinet composed of thirteen drawers, each divided lengthwise into two partitions, and the number of the articles, among which, besides minerals, there were various productions found in mines and marine bodies, amounted to about sixteen hundred. It must however have been considerable for that period, as the collector tells us he laid out sums in forming it which few could be able to expend[899]; and as Jacob Fabricius, in order to see it, undertook a journey from Chemnitz to Torgau[900]. About this time lived in France that ingenious and intelligent potter, Bernard Palissy, who collected all kinds of natural and artificial rarities, and published a catalogue of them, which he made his guide in the study of natural history[901]. Michael Mercati, a physician, who was contemporary, formed also in Italy a large collection of natural curiosities, and wrote a very copious description of them, which was first printed about the beginning of the last century[902]. The collection of Ferdinand Imperati, a Neapolitan, the description of which was printed for the first time in 1599, belongs to the same period; and likewise the large collection of Fran. Calceolari of Verona, the catalogue of which was first printed in 1584[903]. Walch and some others mention the catalogue of Brackenhoffer’s collection as one of the earliest, but it was printed for the first time only in 1677.

[The TRADESCANTS, father and son, are celebrated as being among the first collectors of rarities in this country, which they deposited during their lives in a large house situate in the parish of Lambeth. This became a place of fashionable resort from the curiosities it contained, and obtained the appellation of Tradescant’s ark. A catalogue of its contents was printed in 1656 under the title of Museum Tradescantium. In 1659 this collection was purchased by ELIAS ASHMOLE, who presented it, together with his books, MSS., and other rarities, to the University of Oxford in 1683, thereby commencing the now celebrated ASHMOLEAN MUSEUM.

About the same period, JAMES PETIVER, still celebrated for his curious and interesting botanical publications, made extensive collections of natural curiosities, employing captains, ship-surgeons, merchants, &c. to bring him whatever they could find suitable to his museum, at almost any cost. He kept up an extensive correspondence in pursuit of this object, and eventually formed one of the finest collections hitherto made in England. At his death it was purchased by that celebrated naturalist, Sir HANS SLOANE, and thus became the foundation of perhaps the most important collection in Europe--the BRITISH MUSEUM.

Sir Hans Sloane, after having accompanied the duke of Albemarle to Jamaica as physician, was elected on his return to this country to succeed Sir Isaac Newton as president of the Royal Society. He was born in 1660, and died on the 11th of January, 1752. Having with great labour and expense during the course of his long life collected a rich cabinet of medals, objects of natural history, &c., and a valuable library of books and MSS., he bequeathed the whole to the public on condition that the sum of £20,000 should be paid to his executors, being little more than the intrinsic value of the medals, metallic ores and precious stones comprised in his collection. Parliament fulfilled the terms of the legacy, and in 1753 an act was passed “for the purchase of the museum or collection of Sir Hans Sloane, Bart. and of the Harleian collection of MSS., and for procuring one general repository for the better reception and more convenient use of the said collection, and of the Cottonian library and additions thereto.” Such was the commencement of the British Museum, every department of which has since been vastly augmented. The printed books alone occupy TEN MILES of SHELF, and owing to our connexions with every part of the globe, it vies in the variety and number of objects of natural history with the most celebrated museums of the world. The interest taken in these collections by the public is evident from the number of persons who visited them from Christmas 1844 to Christmas 1845, amounting to no less than 685,614.

Nor should we omit to mention the collection of curiosities, &c. formed by JAMES SALTER, more commonly known by the name of Don Saltero. They were exhibited to the public at his Coffee-house, Cheyne-Walk, Chelsea, which was first opened about the year 1695. It was a very mixed collection of saints’ bones, models, carved ivory, and objects of natural history. The following announcement, printed in the Weekly Journal for June 22, 1723, may be regarded as containing the most positive and authentic information concerning this establishment, inasmuch as it appears to have been sanctioned by the proprietor himself.

SIR.--Fifty years since to Chelsea Great,-- From Rodman, on the Irish Main,-- I stroll’d, with maggots in my pate, Where, much improved, they still remain. Through various employs I’ve past,-- A scraper, virtuos’, projector, Tooth-drawer, trimmer,--and at last I’m now a gim-crack-whim collector. Monsters of all sorts here are seen, Strange things in nature as they grew so: Some relicks of the Sheba Queen, And fragments of the famed Bob Crusoe. Knick-knacks, too, dangle round the wall, Some in glass-cases, some on shelf; But, what’s the rarest sight of all, Your humble servant shows Himself. On this my chiefest hope depends, Now, if you will my cause espouse, In journals pray direct your friends To my Museum--Coffee-house. And, in requital for the timely favour, I’ll gratis bleed, draw teeth, and be your shaver: Nay, that your pate may with my noddle tarry, And you shine bright as I do,--Marry! shall ye Freely consult your Revelation--Molly, Nor shall one jealous thought a huff, For she has taught me manners long enough.

Chelsea Knackatory. DON SALTERO.

A fine engraving of Salter’s house, with a description and catalogue of his collection, will be found in Smith’s Historical and Literary Curiosities.]

FOOTNOTES

[838] Fragments of such inscriptions have been collected by Mercurialis in his work De Arte Gymnastica, lib. i. cap. 1.Return to passage

[839] Plin. lib. xxix. cap. 1. Strabo, lib. xiv.Return to passage

[840] Plin. lib. xii. cap. 2.Return to passage

[841] Plin. lib. vi. cap. 31.Return to passage

[842] Hist. Anim. lib. x. cap. 40.Return to passage

[843] Plin. lib. xxviii. cap. 4.Return to passage

[844] Plin. lib. xi. cap. 31.Return to passage

[845] Plin. lib. v. cap. 9. This crocodile was still remaining in the author’s time.Return to passage

[846] Lib. xii. cap. 19.Return to passage

[847] Plin. lib. viii. cap. 12. Valer. Max. lib. i. cap. 8. Orosius, lib. iv. cap. 8. Jul. Obsequens de prodigiis, cap. 29. Hujus serpentis maxillæ usque ad Numantinum bellum in publico pependisse dicuntur. May not this animal have been the Boa constrictor?Return to passage

[848] Cicero in Verrem, iv. cap. 46. Valer. Max. lib. i.Return to passage

[849] Scaliger De Subtilit. lib. xv. exercit. 246.Return to passage

[850] Plin. lib. ix. cap. 5, and v. 13. 31. Strabo, lib. xvi.Return to passage

[851] Pausanias, in Arcadicis, cap. 46 and 47.Return to passage

[852] Philostrat. in Vita Apollon. lib. iii. cap. 5. I conjecture that these nuts were cocoa-nuts.Return to passage

[853] Vita Augusti, c. 72.Return to passage

[854] Plin. lib. viii. cap. 16.Return to passage

[855] Plin. lib. xxxi. cap. 9. Isidorus Origin. lib. xvi. cap. 2. Nitre also was employed for the like purpose. Plin. lib. xxxi. cap. 10. Herodot. lib. ii. Sextus Empiricus in Pyrrhon. Hypotypos. cap. 24. The last author ascribes this custom to the Persians in particular.Return to passage

[856] Dion Cassius, lib. xxxvii. cap. 14. See the Life of Pompey in Plutarch, who adds that the countenance of Mithridates could no longer be distinguished, because the persons who embalmed the body in this manner had forgotten to take out the brain.Return to passage

[857] Eunapius in Ædesio.Return to passage

[858] In Acta sancti Guiberti, cap. 6.Return to passage

[859] Varro De Re Rustica, lib. ii. cap. 4.Return to passage

[860] Phlegon Trallian. De Mirabil. cap. 34, 35, adopts in his account the same expression as that used in the Geoponica, lib. xix. cap. 9, respecting the preservation of the flesh. Pliny however says, lib. vii. cap. 3, “Nos principatu Claudii Cæsaris allatum illi ex Ægypto hippocentaurum in melle vidimus.” Perhaps it was placed in honey after its arrival at Rome, in order that it might be better preserved.Return to passage

[861] See Hieronymi Vita Pauli Eremitæ.Return to passage

[862] Philostorgii Historia Ecclesiastica, 1643, 4to, p. 41.Return to passage

[863] Columnæ Aquatil. et Terrestr. Observat. cap. 15.Return to passage

[864] Plin. lib. xxii. cap. 24.Return to passage

[865] Strabo, lib. xvi.Return to passage

[866] Xenophon, Rer. Græc. lib. v.Return to passage

[867] Diodorus Siculus, lib. xv.Return to passage

[868] Josephi Antiq. Jud. lib. xiv. c. 13. De Bello Jud. lib. i. c. 7.Return to passage

[869] Æliani Var. Hist. lib. xii. cap. 8.Return to passage

[870] Statius, Silv. iii. 2.Return to passage

[871] Curtius, lib. x. cap. 10.Return to passage

[872] Corippus De Laudibus Justini II.Return to passage

[873] Varro, in Nonius, cap. iii. The following words of Lucretius, b. iii. ver. 902, “aut in melle situm suffocari,” allude perhaps to the above circumstance.Return to passage

[874] Columella, xii. 45. Apicii Ars Coquinar. lib. i. cap. 20.Return to passage

[875] Plutarch in the Life of Alexander relates, that among other valuables in the treasury at Susa, that conqueror found 5000 talents of the purple dye, which was perfectly fresh, though nearly two hundred years old, and that its preservation was ascribed to its being covered with honey. This account is well illustrated in Mercurialis Var. Lect. lib. vi. cap. 26.Return to passage

[876] Plin. lib. xxix. cap. 4.Return to passage

[877] Dier. Genial. lib. iii. cap. 8.Return to passage

[878] Herodot. lib. iv. cap. 71.Return to passage

[879] Θάπτουσι δ’ ἐν μέλιτι, κηριῳ περιπλάσαντες. Sepeliunt in melle, cera cadavere oblito. The bodies therefore were first covered with wax, and then deposited in honey.Return to passage

[880] Herodot. lib. i. cap. 140. Cicero, Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. Alexandri ab Alexan. Dier. Genial. lib. iii. cap. 2.Return to passage

[881] Plutarchus in Vita Agesilai. The following passage of Quintilian’s Institut. Orat. lib. vi. cap. 1. 40, is understood by most commentators, as if the author meant to say that a waxen image of the person deceased, made by pouring the wax into a mould of gypsum, was exhibited. “Et prolata novissime, deformitate ipsa (nam ceris cadaver attulerant infusum) præteritam quoque orationis gratiam perdidit.” See Turnebi Adversar. lib. xxix. cap. 13. But in my opinion it appears very probable that the body itself, covered with wax, was carried into the court.Return to passage

[882] Near Damietta are found a kind of mullets, which, after being covered over with wax, are by these means sent throughout all Turkey, and to different parts of Europe.--Pocock’s Travels.Return to passage

[883] Theophilus Raynaudus de incorruptione cadaverum, in vol. xiii. of the works of that learned Jesuit, Lugd. 1665.Return to passage

[884] Beguillet, Déscription du Duché de Bourgogne, i. p. 192.Return to passage

[885] Liber Regalis, in the article De exequiis regalibus.Return to passage

[886] Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 376.Return to passage

[887] Dart’s Westminster, ii. p. 28.Return to passage

[888] In the account of the funeral expenses stands the following article: “To Thomas Graham, apothecary to his majesty, for a fine double cerecloth, with a large quantity of very rich perfumed aromatic powders, &c., for embalming his late majesty’s royal body, 152_l._” See Archæologia, ut supra, p. 402.Return to passage

[889] Livius, lib. xl. cap. 29. Pliny, b. xiii. chap. 13, relates the same thing, with a little variation, respecting the annals of Cassius Hemina: “Mirabantur alii, quomodo illi libri durare potuissent. Ille ita rationem reddebat; lapidem fuisse quadratum circiter in media area vinctum candelis quoquoversus. In eo lapide insuper libros impositos fuisse, propterea arbitrari eos non computruisse. Et libros citratos fuisse, propterea arbitrarier tineas non tetigisse.”--Hardouin thinks that libri citrati were books in which folia citri were placed to preserve them from insects. The first editions however have libri cedrati, and even the paper itself may have been covered over with some resinous substance. The scarce edition which I received as a present from Professor Bause at Moscow, Opus impressum per Joan. Rubeum et Bernardinum Fratresque Vercellenses 1507, fol. has in page 98 the word caedratos, and in the margin caeratos.Return to passage

[890] A catalogue of this collection may be found in the second volume of Valentin’s Museum Museorum.Return to passage

[891] Von Stettens Kunstgeschichte von Augsburg, p. 218. 362.Return to passage

[892] With how much care this learned man, who died in 1544, in the twenty-ninth year of his age, collected minerals and plants is proved by his Silva Observationum Variarum, quas inter peregrinandum brevissime notavit. Walch, in his Naturgeschichte der Versteinerungen, considers it as the first general oryctography of Germany, and is surprised that so extensive a work should have been thought of at that period. Wallerius, in his Lucubratio de Systematibus Mineralogicis, Hohniæ, 1768, 8vo, p. 27, considers this Silva as a systematic description of all minerals. Both however are mistaken. Cordus undertook a journey in 1542, through some parts of Germany, and drew up a short catalogue without order, of the natural objects he met with in the course of his travels, which was published by Conrad Gesner, together with the other works of this industrious man, at Strasburg in 1561. This book, which I have in my possession, has in the title page, In hoc volumine continetur Valerii Cordi in Dioscoridis libros de Medica Materia; ejusdem Historiæ Stirpium, &c. The Silva begins page 217.Return to passage

[893] That Agricola had a good collection, may be concluded from his writings, in which he describes minerals according to their external appearance, and mentions the places where they are found.Return to passage

[894] H. Mohsen says in his Account of Mark Brandenburg, Berlin, 1783, 4to, p. 142. Thurneisser is the first person, as far as is known at present, who in this country formed a collection of natural curiosities.Return to passage

[895] “Ortelius habebat domi suæ imagines, statuas, nummos ... conchas ab ipsis Indis et Antipodibus, marmora omnis coloris, spiras testudineas tantæ magnitudinis, ut decem ex iis viri in orbem sedentes cibum sumere possent; alias rursum ita angustas, ut vix magnitudinem capitelli unius aciculi adæquarent.”--M. Adami Vitæ Germ. Philos. Heidelb. 1615, 8vo, p. 431.Return to passage

[896] See Biographia Britannica, vol. iv. p. 2469. [The names of our early English collectors, Tradescant, Ashmole, Petiver, and Sir Hans Sloane, though a little later than the period alluded to, deserve to be recorded here.]Return to passage

[897] This extract may be seen in D. G. Molleri Dissert. de Technophysiotameis, Altorfi, 1704, p. 18. Some account of Quickelberg may be found in Sweertii Athenæ Belgicæ, Antv. 1628, fol. p. 671; in Val. Andreæ Bibliotheca Belgica, Lov. 1643, 4to, p. 806; and in Simleri Bibliotheca Instituta a Gesnero, Tiguri, 1574, fol. p. 617.Return to passage

[898] De Omni Rerum Fossilium Genere, op. Conr. Gesneri. Tig. 1565, 8vo.Return to passage

[899] He says in the preface, “Thesaurum fossilium multis impensis collegi, paucis comparabilem.”Return to passage

[900] This is related by Jacob Fabricius, in the preface to the treatise of his brother George Fabricius De Metallicis Rebus, which may be found in Gesner’s collection before-quoted.Return to passage

[901] This catalogue is printed in Œuvres de B. Palissy. Par M. Faujas de Saint-Fond et Gobet. Paris, 1777, 4to, p. 691. [Quite recently a new edition of Palissy’s works, together with an account of the life of this remarkable man by M. Cap, has been published at Paris. Palissy, after long devoting his services to the king and some of the royal family, was shut up in the Bastille on account of his religion. It is said that one day Henry III., having visited him in his prison, spoke to him thus: “My good man, you have been for forty-five years in my mother’s and my service. We have suffered you to live in your religion amidst fires and massacres: now I am so strongly urged by the Guise party and by my people, that I am constrained to leave you in the hands of my enemies, and to-morrow you will be burnt if you are not converted.” “Sire,” replied Bernard, “I am ready to lay down my life for the glory of God. You have often told me that you pitied me; and now I pity you, who have uttered these words, ‘I am constrained!’ Sire, it is not speaking like a king; and it is what you yourself, those who constrain you, the Guisards, and all your people, could never compel me to; for I know how to die.” Palissy died indeed in the Bastille, but a natural death, in 1589. Thus ended a career illustrious alike for great talents and rare virtues.]Return to passage

[902] Mercati Metallotheca. Romæ, 1717, fol. to which an appendix was added in 1719.Return to passage

[903] Joh. Baptistæ Olivi de reconditis et præcipuis collectaneis a Franc. Calceolario in Museo adservatis testificatio ad Hieron. Mercurialem. Venet. 1584, 4to. An edition was published also at Verona in quarto, in 1593. The complete description was however first printed at Verona in a small folio, in 1622; Musæum Calceolarianum Veronense. Maffei, in his Verona Illustrat. Veron. 1732, fol. p. 202, says, “Calceolari ... fu de’ primi, che raccogliendo grandissima quantità d’erbe, piante, minerali, animali diseccati, droghe rare, cose impetrite, ed altre rarità naturali, formasse museo di questo genere.”Return to passage

CHIMNEYS

Notwithstanding the magnificence of the Grecian and Roman architecture, which we still admire in those ruins that remain as monuments of the talents and genius of the ancient builders, it is very doubtful whether their common dwelling-houses had chimneys, that is, passages or funnels formed in the walls for conveying away the smoke from the fire-place or stoves through the different stories to the summit of the edifice; conveniences which are not wanting in the meanest of our houses at present, and in the smallest of our villages. This question some have pretended to determine without much labour or research. How can we suppose, say they, that the Romans, our masters in the art of building, should not have devised and invented some means to keep free from smoke their elegant habitations, which were furnished and ornamented in a splendid and costly manner? How is it possible that a people who purchased ease and convenience at the greatest expense, should suffer their apartments to be filled with smoke, which must have allowed them to enjoy scarcely a moment of pleasure? And how could their cooks dress in smoky kitchens the various sumptuous dishes with which the most refined voluptuaries covered their tables? One must however be very little acquainted with the history of inventions and manners, to consider such bare conjectures as decisive proofs. It is undoubtedly certain, that many of our common necessaries were for many centuries unknown to the most enlightened nations, and that they are in part still wanting in some countries at present. Besides, it is probable that before the invention of chimneys, other means, now forgotten, were employed to remove smoke.

The ancient mason-work still to be found in Italy does not determine the question. Of the walls of towns, temples, amphitheatres, baths, aqueducts and bridges, there are some though very imperfect remains, in which chimneys cannot be expected; but of common dwelling-houses none are to be seen, except at Herculaneum, and there no traces of chimneys have been discovered[904]. The paintings and pieces of sculpture which are preserved, afford us as little information; for nothing can be perceived in them that bears the smallest resemblance to a modern chimney. If the writings of the ancients are to be referred to, we must collect from the works of the Greek and Roman authors whatever seems allusive to the subject. This indeed has been already done by various men of learning[905]; but the greater part of them seem to deduce more from the passages they quote than can be admitted by those who read and examine them without prejudice. I shall here present them to my readers, that they may have an opportunity of judging for themselves.

We are told by Homer, that Ulysses, when in the grotto of Calypso, wished that he might see the smoke ascending from Ithaca, that is, he wished to be in sight of the island[906]. Montfaucon is of opinion that this wish is unintelligible unless it be allowed that the houses of Ithaca had chimneys. But cannot smoke be seen to rise also when it makes its way through doors and windows? When navigators at sea observe smoke arising, they conclude that they are in the neighbourhood of inhabited land; but no one undoubtedly will thence infer, that the habitations of the people have chimneys.

Herodotus[907] relates that a king of Lebæa, when one of his servants asked for his wages, offered him in jest the sun, which at that time shone into the house through the chimney, as some have translated the original; but it appears that what is here called chimney, was nothing more than an opening in the roof, under which, perhaps, the fire was made in the middle of the edifice. Through a high chimney, of the same form as those used at present, the sun certainly could not throw his rays on the floor of any apartment.

In the Vespæ of Aristophanes[908], old Philocleon wishes to escape through the kitchen. Some one asks, “What is that which makes a noise in the chimney?” “I am the smoke,” replies the old man, “and am endeavouring to get out at the chimney.” This passage, however, which, according to the usual translation, seems to allude to a common chimney, can, in my opinion, especially when we consider the illustration of the scholiasts, be explained also by a simple hole in the roof, as Reiske has determined; and indeed this appears to be more probable, as we find mention made of a top or covering with which the hole was closed.

In a passage of the poet Alexis, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, quoted by Athenæus[909], some one asks, “Boy, is there a kitchen? Has it a chimney?” “Yes, but it is a bad one--the eyes will suffer.” The question here alludes without doubt to a passage for carrying off smoke; but information is not given us sufficient to determine its form and construction. Athenæus has preserved also a passage of the poet Diphilus[910], in which a parasite says, when he is invited to the house of a rich man, he does not look at the magnificence of the building or the elegance of the furniture, but to the smoke of the kitchen. “If I see it,” adds he, “rising up in abundance, quick and in a straight column, my heart is rejoiced, for I expect a good supper.” In this passage, however, which according to Maternus is clearly in favour of chimneys, I can find as little proof as in the words of the poet Sosipater, quoted likewise by Athenæus[911], who reckons the art of determining which way the wind blows to be a part of the knowledge requisite in a perfect cook. “He must know,” says he, “to discover from what quarter it comes, for when the smoke is driven about it spoils many kinds of dishes.” Instead of agreeing with Ferrarius that this quotation seems to show that the houses of the ancients were provided with chimneys, I conclude rather from it, that they were not; for, had there been chimneys in their kitchens, the cooks must have left the smoke to make its way through them without giving themselves any trouble; but if they were destitute of these conveniences, it would be necessary for them to afford it some other passage; it would consequently be the business of the cook to consider on what side it would be most advantageous to open a door or a window; and in this he would undoubtedly be guided by the direction of the wind. That this really was the case, appears from a Greek epigram, which by an ingenious thought, gives us an idea of the passage of smoke through a window[912].

These, as far as I know, are all the passages which have been collected from Greek authors respecting this question. But instead of proving that the houses of the ancients were built with chimneys, they seem much rather to show the contrary: especially when we consider what the Roman writers have said on the same subject; for the information of the latter, taken together, affords good grounds to believe that no chimneys were to be found in the houses at Rome, at least at the time when these authors wrote; and this certainly would not have been the case had the Romans ever seen chimneys among the Greeks. I shall now lay before my readers those passages which appear on the first view to refute my conjecture.

When the triumviri, says Appian[913], caused those who had been proscribed by them to be sought out by the military, some of them, to avoid the bloody hands of their persecutors, hid themselves in wells, and others, as Ferrarius translates the words, “in fumaria sub tecto, qua scilicet fumus e tecto evolvitur.” The true translation however is “fumosa cænacula.” The principal persons of Rome endeavoured to conceal themselves in the smoky apartments of the upper story under the roof, which in general were inhabited only by poor people; and this seems to be confirmed by what Juvenal[914] expressly says, “Rarus venit in cænacula miles.”

Those passages of the ancients which speak of smoke rising up from houses have with equal impropriety been supposed to allude to chimneys, as if the smoke could not make its way through doors and windows. Seneca[915] writes, “Last evening I had some friends with me, and on that account a stronger smoke was raised; not such a smoke however as bursts forth from the kitchens of the great, and which alarms the watchmen, but such a one as signifies that guests are arrived.” Those whose judgements are not already warped by prejudice, will undoubtedly find the true sense of these words to be, that the smoke forced its way through the kitchen windows. Had the houses been built with chimney-funnels, one cannot conceive why the watchmen should have been alarmed when they observed a stronger smoke than usual arising from them; but as the kitchens had no conveniences of that kind, an apprehension of fire, when extraordinary entertainments were to be provided in the houses of the rich for large companies, seems to have been well-founded; and on such occasions people appointed for that purpose were stationed in the neighbourhood to be constantly on the watch, and to be ready to extinguish the flames in case a fire should happen[916]. There are many other passages to be found in Roman authors of the like kind, which it is hardly necessary to mention, such as that of Virgil[917]:

Et jam summa procul villarum culmina fumant.

and the following words of Plautus[918] descriptive of a miser:

Quin divûm atque hominum clamat continuo fidem, Suam rem periisse, seque eradicarier, De suo tigillo fumus si qua exit foras.

If there were no funnels in the houses of the ancients to carry off the smoke, the directions given by Columella to make kitchens so high that the roof should not catch fire, was of the utmost importance[919]. An accident of the kind, which that author seems to have apprehended, had almost happened at Beneventum, when the landlord who entertained Mæcenas and his company was making a strong fire in order to get some birds sooner roasted:

... ubi sedulus hospes Pæne arsit, macros dum turdos versat in igne; Nam vaga per veterem dilapso flamma culinam Vulcano summum properabat lambere tectum[920].

Had there been chimneys in the Roman houses, Vitruvius certainly would not have failed to describe their construction, which is sometimes attended with considerable difficulties, and which is intimately connected with the regulation of the plan of the whole edifice. He does not, however, say a word on this subject; neither does Julius Pollux, who has collected with great care the Greek names of every part of a dwelling-house; and Grapaldus, who in later times made a like collection of the Latin terms, has not given a Latin word expressive of a modern chimney[921]

I shall here answer an objection which may be made, that the word caminus means a chimney; and I shall also explain what methods the ancients, and particularly the Romans, employed without chimneys to warm their apartments. Caminus signified, as far as I have been able to learn, first a chemical or metallurgic furnace, in which a crucible was placed for melting and refining metals. It signified also a smith’s forge[922]. It signified likewise, without doubt, a hearth, or as we talk at present, a fire-place, which served for warming the apartment in which it was constructed; and for that purpose portable stoves or fire-pans were also employed. These were either filled with burning coals, or wood was lighted in them, and, when burned to coal, was carried into the apartment. In all these however there appears no trace of a chimney.

The complaints often made by the ancients respecting smoke serve also to confirm the opinion that they had no chimneys. Vitruvius[923], where he speaks of ornamenting and fitting up apartments, says expressly, that there ought to be no carved work or mouldings, but plain cornices, in rooms where fire is made and many lights burned, because they will soon be covered with soot, and therefore will require to be often cleaned. On the other hand, he allows carving in summer apartments, where the effects of smoke are not to be apprehended. The moderns, however, who use chimneys, ornament the borders of them with carving, painting and gilding, nor are they injured by the smoke; but we find that among the ancients, furniture of every kind, ceilings and walls were soon covered over with soot; and from this even the images of their ancestors, imagines majorum, were not secure, which, though they were to be found only in the houses of the great, and stood in niches in the atrium[924] or hall, became black with smoke, and on that account were justly named fumosæ[925]. The smoke therefore must have been blown very much about, and carried into every apartment. In the houses of the opulent, care in all probability was employed to keep them clean; but the habitations of families who did not belong to the common or poorest classes, are represented as smoky and black; and we are told that their walls and ceilings were full of soot. They were therefore called black houses, as in Russia the huts of the common people, which are furnished with paltry stoves, and which are blackened in the same manner by the smoke of the fir-wood used in them for fuel, are called black huts[926].

As the houses of the ancients were so smoky, it may be easily comprehended how, by means of smoke, they could dry and harden, not only various articles used as food, but also different pieces of timber employed for making all sorts of large and small implements. In this manner was prepared the wood destined for ploughs, waggons, and ships, and particularly that of which rudders were formed[927]. For this reason pantries for flesh and wine, and also coops to hold fowls, which were said to thrive by smoke, were constructed near the kitchen, where it always abounded[928]; and on the other hand, it was necessary to remove to a distance from kitchens, apartments destined for the purpose of preserving such articles as were liable to be spoiled by smoke[929]: but among us the case is widely different, for we often have neat and elegant apartments in the neighbourhood of the kitchen.

From what has been said it will readily appear why the ancients kept by them such quantities of hard wood, which, when burning, does not occasion smoke. The same kind is even sought after at present, and on this account we value that of the white and common willow, Salix alba and triandra; because when burned in our chimneys, it makes little smoke, and throws out fewest sparks. The great trouble, however, which was taken in old times to procure wood that would not smoke, clearly proves that this was much more necessary in those periods than at present. It was customary to peel off the bark from the wood, to let it lie afterwards a long time in water, and then to suffer it to dry[930]. This process must undoubtedly have proved of great service, for we know that wood which has been conveyed by water, in floats, kindles more readily, burns brisker, and throws out less smoke than that which has been transported from the forest in waggons. Another method, much employed, of rendering wood less apt to smoke, was to soak it in oil or oil-lees, or to pour oil over it[931]. With the like view, wood, before it was used, was hardened or scorched over the fire, until it lost the greater part of its moisture, without being entirely reduced to charcoal. This method is still employed with advantage in glass-houses and porcelain manufactories, where there are stoves made on purpose to dry wood. Such scorched wood appears to be that to which the ancients gave the name of ligna cocta or coctilia[932]. It was sold in particular warehouses at Rome, called tabernæ coctiliariæ, and the preparing as well as the selling of it formed an employment followed by the common people, and which, as we are told, was carried on by the father of the emperor Pertinax[933]. When it was necessary to kindle fire without wood prepared in that manner, an article probably too expensive for indigent families, we find complaints of smoke which brought on a watering of the eyes; and this was the case with Horace at a paltry inn where he happened to stop when on a journey[934].

The information which can be collected from the Greek and Roman authors respecting the manner in which the ancients warmed their apartments, however imperfect, nevertheless shows that they commonly used for that purpose a large fire-pan or portable stove, in which they kindled wood, and, when the wood was well-lighted, carried it into the room, or which they filled with burning coals. When Alexander the Great was entertained by a friend in winter, as the weather was cold and raw, a small fire-bason was brought into the apartment to warm it. The prince, observing the size of the vessel, and that it contained only a few coals, desired his host, in a jeering manner, to bring more wood or frankincense, giving him thus to understand that the fire was fitter for burning perfumes than to produce heat[935]. Anacharsis, the Scythian philosopher, though displeased with many of the Grecian customs, praised the Greeks, however, because they shut out the smoke and brought only fire into their houses[936]. We are informed by Lampridius, that the extravagant Heliogabalus caused to be burned in these stoves, instead of wood, Indian spiceries and costly perfumes[937]. It is also worthy of notice, that coals were found in some of the apartments of Herculaneum, as we are told by Winkelmann, but neither stoves nor chimneys. As in Persia and other countries of the East no stoves made in the European manner are used at present, and as it is certain that the manners, customs and furniture of the early ages have been retained there almost without variation, we have reason to suppose that the methods employed by the inhabitants for warming themselves are the same as those used by the ancients. They agree perfectly with the descriptions given by the Greek and Roman authors, and serve in some measure to illustrate them. I shall therefore here insert the account given by De la Valle, as it is the clearest and most to the purpose.

“The Persians,” says he, “make fires in their apartments, not in fire-places as we do, but in stoves in the earth, which they call tennor. These stoves consist of a square or round hole, two spans or a little more in depth, and in shape not unlike an Italian cask. That this hole may throw out heat sooner, and with more strength, there is placed in it an iron vessel of the same size, which is either filled with burning coals, or a fire of wood and other inflammable substances is made in it. When this is done, they place over the hole or stove a wooden top, like a small low table, and spread above it a large coverlet quilted with cotton, which hangs down on all sides to the floor. This covering condenses the heat, and causes it to warm the whole apartment. The people who eat or converse there, and some who sleep in it, lie down on the floor above the carpet, and lean, with their shoulders against the wall, on square cushions, upon which they sometimes also sit; for the tennor is constructed in a place equally distant from the walls on both sides. Those who are not very cold, only put their feet under the table or covering; but those who require more heat can put their hands under it, or creep under it altogether. By these means the stove diffuses over the whole body, without causing uneasiness to the head, so penetrating and agreeable a warmth, that I never in winter experienced anything more pleasant. Those, however, who require less heat let the coverlet hang down on their side to the floor, and enjoy without any inconvenience from the stove the moderately heated air of the apartment. They have a method also of stirring up or blowing the fire when necessary, by means of a small pipe united with the tennor or stove under the earth, and made to project above the floor as high as one chooses, so that the wind, when a person blows into it, because it has no other vent, acts immediately upon the fire like a pair of bellows. When there is no longer occasion to use this stove, both holes are closed up, that is to say, the mouth of the stove and that of the pipe which conveys the air to it, by a flat stone made for that purpose. Scarcely any appearance of them is then to be perceived, nor do they occasion inconvenience, especially in a country where it is always customary to cover the floor with a carpet, and where the walls are plastered. In many parts these stoves are used to cook victuals, by placing kettles over them. They are employed also to bake bread, and for this purpose they are covered with a large broad metal plate, on which the cake is laid; but if the bread is thick and requires more heat, it is put into the stove itself[938].” I shall here remark, that the Jews used such stoves in their houses, and the priests had them also in the temple[939].

Those who have employed their talents on this subject before me, have collected a great many passages from the Greek and Roman writers which speak of fires made for the purpose of affording warmth; but as they contain nothing certain or decisive, I shall not here enlarge upon them[940]. Though one or more expressions may appear to allude to a chimney, and even if we should conclude from them, with Montfaucon, that the ancients were acquainted with the art of constructing in mason-work elevated funnels for conveying off the smoke, it must be allowed, when we consider the many proofs which we find to the contrary, that they were at any rate extremely rare. As they are so convenient and useful, and can be easily constructed upon most occasions, it is impossible, had they been well known, that they should have ever been forgotten. Montfaucon says, from caminus is derived chiminea of the Spaniards; camino of the Italians; cheminée of the French; and kamin of the Germans; and it seems, adds he, beyond a doubt, that the name, with the thing signified, has been transmitted to us from the ancients. Though this derivation be just, the conclusion drawn from it is false. The ancient name of a thing is often given to a new invention that performs the same service. The words mill and moulin came from mola; and yet our mills were unknown to the ancients. Guys relates, that a Greek woman, seeing an European lady covered with a warm cloak, said, “That woman carries her tennor about with her.”

Besides the methods already mentioned, of warming apartments, the ancients had another still more ingenious, which was invented and introduced about the time of Seneca[941]. A large stove or several smaller ones were constructed in the earth under the edifice; and these being filled with burning coals, the heat was conveyed from them into dining-rooms, bed-chambers, or other apartments which one wished to warm[942] by means of pipes inclosed in the walls. The upper end of these hot-air pipes was often ornamented with the representation of a lion’s or a dolphin’s head, or any other figure according to fancy, and could be opened or shut at pleasure. It appears that this apparatus was first constructed in the baths, and became extended afterwards to common use. These pipes sometimes were conducted around the whole edifice[943], as I have seen in our theatres. Palladius advises a branch of such pipes to be conveyed under the floor of an oil-cellar, in order that it may be heated without contracting soot[944]. Such a mode of warming apartments, which approaches very near to that employed in our German stoves, would have been impossible, had the houses been without windows; and it is worthy of remark, that transparent windows, at the time Seneca lived, were entirely new. These pipes, like those of our stoves, could not fail in the course of time to become filled with soot; and as they were likely to catch fire by being overheated, laws were made forbidding them to be brought too near to the wall of a neighbouring house[945], though there were other reasons also for this regulation. As what is here said will be better elucidated by a description of the still existing ruins of some ancient baths, I shall transcribe the following passage from Winkelmann:--

“Of chimneys in apartments,” says this author, “no traces are to be seen. Charcoal was found in some of the rooms in the city of Herculaneum, from which we may conclude that the inhabitants used only charcoal fires for warming themselves. In the houses of the common citizens at Naples, there are no chimneys at present; and people of rank there as well as at Rome, who strictly adhere to the rules laid down by physicians for preserving health, live in apartments without chimneys, and which are never heated by coal-fires. In the villas, however, which were situated without Rome, on eminences where the air was purer and colder, the ancients had hypocausta or stoves, which were more common perhaps than in the city. Stoves were found in the apartments of a ruined villa, when the ground was dug up to form a foundation for the buildings erected there at present. Below these apartments there were subterraneous chambers, about the height of a table, two and two under each apartment, and close on all sides. The flat top of these chambers consisted of very large tiles, and was supported by two pillars, which, as well as the tiles, were joined together, not with lime but some kind of cement, that they might not be separated by the heat. In the roofs of these chambers there were square pipes made of clay, which hung half-way down into each, and the mouths of them were conveyed into the apartment above. Pipes of the like kind, built into the wall of this lower apartment, rose into another in the second story, where their mouths were ornamented with the figure of a lion’s head, formed of burned clay. A narrow passage, of about two feet in breadth, conducted to the subterranean chambers, into which coals were thrown through a square hole, and the heat was conveyed from them by means of the before-mentioned pipes into the apartment immediately above, the floor of which was composed of coarse mosaic-work, and the walls were incrusted with marble. This was the sweating-apartment (sudatorium). The heat of this apartment was conveyed into that on the second story by the clay pipes enclosed in the wall, which had mouths opening into the former, as well as the latter, to collect and afford a passage to the heat, which was moderated in the upper apartment, and could be increased or lessened at pleasure.” Such a complex apparatus would have been unnecessary had the Romans been acquainted with our stoves[946].

I have, as yet, made no mention of a passage of the emperor Julian, which is too remarkable to be entirely omitted; though, at the same time, it is so corrupted that little can be collected from it[947]. Julian relates, that during his residence at Paris the winter was uncommonly severe; but that he would not allow the house in which he lived to be heated, though it had the same apparatus for that purpose as the other houses of the city. His reason for this was, that he wished to inure himself to the climate; and he was apprehensive also, that the walls by being heated might become moist and throw out a damp vapour. He suffered, therefore, burning coals only to be brought into his apartment, which, however, occasioned pains in his head, and other disagreeable symptoms. What apparatus the houses of Paris then had for producing heat, no one can conjecture from the passage alluded to. In my opinion, they were furnished with the above-described subterranean stoves: but even if these should not be here meant, I cannot help thinking that the emperor’s relation confirms that they had not chimneys like ours; for, had the case been otherwise, the cautious prince would not have exposed himself to the vapour of charcoal, the noxious quality and effects of which could not be unknown to him.

Though the great antiquity of chimneys is not disputed, too little information has been collected to enable us to determine, with any degree of certainty, the period when they first came into use. If it be true, as Du Cange, Vossius, and others affirm, that apartments called caminatæ were apartments with chimneys, these must, indeed, be very old; for that word occurs as early as the year 1069, and perhaps earlier[948]; but it is always found connected in such a manner as contradicts entirely the above signification. Papias the grammarian, who wrote about 1051, explains the word fumarium by caminus per quem exit fumus; and Johannes de Janua, a monk, who about 1268 wrote his Catholicon, printed at Venice, says “Epicaustorium, instrumentum quod fit super ignem caussa emittendi fumum.” But these fumaria and epicaustoria may have been pipes by which the smoke, as is the case in our vent-furnaces, was conveyed through the nearest wall or window: at any rate, this expression, with its explanations, can afford no certain proof that chimneys are so old[949]; especially as later writers give us reason to believe the contrary. Riccobaldus de Ferrara[950], Galvano Fiamma or Flamma, a Dominican monk from Milan[951], who died in 1344 professor at Pavia, and Giovanni de Mussis, who about 1388 wrote his Chronicon Placentinum[952], and all the writers of the fourteenth century, seem either to have been unacquainted with chimneys, or to have considered them as the newest invention of luxury.

That there were no chimneys in the tenth, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, seems to be proved by the so-called ignitegium, or pyritegium, the curfew-bell of the English, and couvre-feu of the French. In the middle ages, as they are termed, people made fires in their houses in a hole or pit in the centre of the floor, under an opening formed in the roof; and when the fire was burnt out, or the family went to bed at night, the hole was shut by a cover of wood. In those periods a law was almost everywhere established, that the fire should be extinguished at a certain time in the evening; that the cover should be put over the fire-place; and that all the family should retire to rest, or at least be at home[953]. The time when this ought to be done was signified by the ringing of a bell. William the Conqueror introduced this law into England in the year 1068, and fixed the ignitegium at seven in the evening, in order to prevent nocturnal assemblies[954]; but this law was abolished by Henry I., in 1100. From this ancient practice has arisen, in my opinion, a custom in Lower Saxony of saying, when people wish to go home sooner than the company choose, that they hear the Bürgerglocke, burghers’ bell. The ringing of the curfew-bell gave rise also to the prayer-bell, as it was called, which has still been retained in some protestant countries. Pope John XXIII., with a view to avert certain apprehended misfortunes, which rendered his life uncomfortable, gave orders that every person, on hearing the ignitegium, should repeat the Ave Maria three times[955]. When the appearance of a comet and a dread of the Turks afterwards alarmed all Christendom, Pope Calixtus III. increased these periodical times of prayer by ordering the prayer-bell to be rung also at noon[956].

The oldest certain account of chimneys with which I am acquainted, occurs in the year 1347; for an inscription which is still existing or did exist at Venice, relates that at the above period a great many chimneys (molti camini) were thrown down by an earthquake[957]. This circumstance is confirmed by John Villani, the historian, who died at Florence in 1348, and who calls the chimneys fumajuoli[958]. Galeazzo Gataro, who in the Dictionary of Learned Men is named De Gataris, and who died of the plague in 1405, says in his History of Padua, which was afterwards improved and published by his son Andrew, that Francesco da Carraro, lord of Padua, came to Rome in the year 1368, and finding no chimneys in the hotel where he lodged, because at that time fire was kindled in a hole in the middle of the floor, he caused two chimneys, like those which had been long used at Padua, to be constructed, and arched by masons and carpenters whom he had brought along with him. Over these chimneys, the first ever seen at Rome, he affixed his arms, which were still remaining in the time of Gataro[959].

While chimneys continued to be built in so simple a manner, and of such a width as they are still observed to be in old houses, they were so easily cleaned that this service could be performed by a servant with a wisp of straw, or a little brushwood fastened to a rope; but after the flues, in order to save room, were made narrower, or when several flues were united together, the cleaning of them became so difficult, that they required boys, or people of small size, accustomed to that employment. The first chimney-sweepers in Germany came from Savoy, Piedmont, and the neighbouring territories[960]. These for a long time were the only countries where the cleaning of chimneys was followed as a trade; and I am thence inclined to conjecture that chimneys were invented in Italy[961], rather than that the Savoyards learned the art of climbing from the marmots or mountain-rats, as some have asserted[962]. These needy but industrious people chose and appropriated to themselves, perhaps, this occupation, because they could find no other so profitable. The Lotharingians, however, undertook this business also, and on that account the duke of Lotharingia was styled the Imperial Fire-master. The first Germans who condescended to clean chimneys appear to have been miners; and our chimney-sweepers still procure boys from the Hartz forest, who may be easily discovered by their language. The greater part of the chimney-sweepers (ramoneurs de cheminées) in Paris, at present, are Savoyards; and one may see there everywhere in the streets large groups of their boys[963], many of whom are not above eight years of age, and who, clad in linen frocks, will, when called upon, scramble up at the hazard of their lives, with their besoms and other instruments, through a narrow funnel often fifty feet in length, filled with soot and smoke, and in which they cannot breathe till they arrive at the top, in order to gain five sous; and even of this small pittance they are obliged to pay a part to their avaricious masters[964].

FOOTNOTES

[904] Winkelmann in his Observations on the Baths of the Ancients.Return to passage

[905] The following are the principal authors in whose works information is to be found respecting this subject:--Octavii Ferrarii Electorum libri duo. Patavii 1679, 4to. This work consists of short treatises on different subjects of antiquity. The ninth chapter of the first book, page 32, has for title, “Fumaria, seu fumi emissaria, vulgo caminos, apud veteres in usu fuisse, disputatur.”Return to passage

Justi Lipsii Epistolarum selectarum Chilias, 1613, 8vo. The seventy-fifth letter in Centuria tertia ad Belgas, page 921, treats of chimneys, with which the author says the Greeks and the Romans were unacquainted.

Eberharti a Weyhe Parergon De Camino. To save my readers the trouble which I have had in searching for this small treatise, I shall give them the following information: E. von Weyhe was a learned nobleman of our electorate, a particular account of whose life and writings may be found in Molleri Cimbria Litterata, vol. ii. p. 970. In the year 1612 he published Discursus de speculi origine, usu et abusu, Eberharti von Weyhe. This edition contains nothing on chimneys, nor is there any thing to be found respecting them in the second, inserted in Dornavii Amphitheatrum Sapientiæ Socraticæ Joco-seriæ, Hanoviæ 1619, fol. i. p. 733. But this treatise was twice printed afterwards, as an appendix to the author’s Aulicus Politicus: Francf. 1615, and Wolfenb. 1622, in quarto; and in both these editions may be found at the end, Parergon de camino, inquirendi causa adjectum. In this short essay, which consists of only two pages, the author denies that the Jews, the Greeks, or the Romans had chimneys. Fabricius, in his Bibliograph. Antiquaria, does not quote Von Weyhe, either p. 1004, where he speaks of chimneys, or page 1014, where he speaks of looking-glasses.

Balthasaris Bonifacii Ludicra Historia. Venetiis 1652, 4to, lib. iii. cap. 23. De Caminis, p. 109. What this author says on the subject is of little importance.

Jo. Heringii Tractatus de molendinis eorumque jure, Francf. 1663, 4to.

P. Manutii Comment. in Ciceronis Epist. Familiar. lib. vii. epist. 10, decides against chimneys, and speaks of the manner of warming apartments.

Petronii Satyricon, cura Burmanni, Amst. 1743, 4to, i. p. 836. Burmann, on good grounds, is of opinion that the ancients had not chimneys.

Martini Lexicon Philologicum. Franc. 1655, fol. article Caminus.

Pancirollus De Rebus deperditis, ed. Salmuth, vol. i. tit. 33, p. 77.

Montfaucon, l’Antiquité expliquée, vol. i. p. 102. Montfaucon believes that the ancients had chimneys.

Pitisci Lexicon Antiquitatum Romanarum, fol. The whole article Caminus is transcribed from Lipsius, Ferrarius, and others, without the author’s own opinion.

Muratori, Antiquitates Italiæ Medii Ævi, ii. p. 418.

Constantini Libri de Ceremoniis aulæ Byzantinæ, t. ii. Lipsiæ, 1754, fol. in Reiskii Commentar. p. 125.

Encyclopédie, tome troisième, Paris, 1753, fol. p. 281.

Deutsche Encyclopedie, vol. iv. Frank. 1780, 4to, p. 823.

Maternus von Cilano, Römische Alterthümer, vol. iv. Altona, 1776, 8vo, p. 945. This author is of opinion that chimneys were used by the Greeks, but not by the Romans.

Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne, par Jean le Clerc, tom. xiii. 1720, part i. p. 56. The author gives an extract from Montfaucon, which contains a great many new observations.

Zanetti dell’ origine di alcune arti principali appresso i Veneziani. Venezia, 1758, 4to, p. 78.

Raccolta d’ opuscoli scientifici e filologici. Venezia, 1752, 12mo, tom. xlvii. A Treatise on Chimneys by Scip. Maffei is to be found page 67.

[906] Odyss. lib. i. ver. 58.Return to passage

[907] Lib. viii. c. 137.Return to passage

[908] Ver. 139.Return to passage

[909] Lib. ix. p. 386.Return to passage

[910] Lib. vi. p. 236.Return to passage

[911] Lib. ix. p. 378.Return to passage

[912] Antholog. lib. ii. cap. 32. p. 229.Return to passage

[913] De Bellis Civil. lib. iv. p. 962, edit. Tollii.Return to passage

[914] Sat. x. ver. 17.Return to passage

[915] Epist. 64.Return to passage

[916] Such fire-watchmen were appointed by the emperor Augustus.--Sueton. in Vit. Octav. August. cap. 30. That these watchmen, whom the soldiers in ridicule called Sparteoli, were stationed in the neighbourhood of houses where there were grand entertainments, is proved by Tertulliani Apologet. cap. xxxix. p. 188, edit. De la Cerda. Compare also Casaubon’s annotations on the passage of Suetonius above quoted.Return to passage

[917] Eclog. i. ver. 83.Return to passage

[918] Aulular. act. ii. sc. 4.Return to passage

[919] De Re Rustica, lib. i. cap. 6.Return to passage

[920] Horat. lib. i. sat. 5.Return to passage

[921] Grapaldus De Partibus Ædium.Return to passage

[922] Plin. xxxiii. cap. 4. Virgil. Æn. iii. ver. 580. Juvenal, sat. xiv. ver. 117.Return to passage

[923] Lib. vii. cap. 3.Return to passage

[924] The name atrium had its rise from the walls of such places being black with smoke. Isidorus, xv. 3. This derivation is given also by Servius, Æn. lib. i. ver. 730.Return to passage

[925] Seneca, ep. 44. Cicero in Pison. cap. i. Juvenal, sat. viii. ver. 6.Return to passage

[926] In the Equites of Aristophanes the houses of the common people are called γύπαι and γυπάρια, because γὺψ signifies fuliginosum or fuscum. On account of the smoke they were called also μέλαθρα. Lycophron, 770, and 1190. Μέλαθρον αἰθαλόεν, domicilium fuliginosum, occurs in Homer, Iliad. ii. ver. 414, of which expression and i. ver. 204, the scholiast very properly gives the following explanation: ἀπὸ τοῦ μελαίνεσθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ κάπνου, quoniam a fumo reddebantur nigræ. For the same reason, according to the scholiasts, Apollonius Rhodius, lib. ii. ver. 1089, calls the middle beam of the roof μέλαθρον. Columella, i. 17, says, “Fuligo quæ supra focos tectis inhæret:” among us the soot adheres to the funnel of the chimney, and not to the roof or ceiling.Return to passage

Tecta senis subeunt, nigro deformia fumo; Ignis in hesterno stipite parvus erat.--Ovid. Fast. lib. v. 505.

In cujus hospitio nec fumi nec nidoris nebulam vererer.--Apuleii Metam. 1.

Sordidum flammæ trepidant rotantes Vertice fumum.--Horat. iv. od. 11.

It may be here said, that the above passages allude to the hovels of the poor, which are black enough among us. These are not, however, all so smoky and so covered with soot both without and within; for though this may be the case in some villages, the houses of the common people in our cities may be called dirty rather than smoky. These passages of Roman authors speak principally of town-houses. The house in which Horace wished to entertain his Phyllis was not a mean one, for, he tells her a little before, “Ridet argento domus.” [Black huts or hovels, such as are described in the above remarks, having merely a hole in the roof, or an open window for the escape of smoke, are still common in Ireland, and in some of the less-frequented villages of the Continent. Indeed they are met with even in England. But in all cases the buildings appear to be very ancient.]

[927] Hesiodi Op. ver. 627. Virgilii Georg. lib. i. 175.Return to passage

[928] Columella, i. 6, et viii. cap. 3.Return to passage

[929] Columella, lib. i. cap. 6, p. 405. Artificial heat could not be employed to prevent oil from becoming clotted by being frozen; for it was liable to be hurt by soot and smoke, the constant attendants of artificial warming.--Columella, lib. i. cap. 6.Return to passage

[930] This method of preparing wood is described by Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. lib. xv. cap. 10.Return to passage

[931] Cato De Re Rust. cap. 130. Pliny, lib. xv. cap. 8.Return to passage

[932] Such wood in Greek was called ἄκαπτα, in Latin acapna, in Homer’s Odyssey, book vi. κάγκανα and δανὰ, Pollux, p. 621, καύσιμα. This wood is mentioned also by Galen, in Antidot. lib. i. Trebellius Pollio in Vita Claudii, in an account of the firing allowed to him when a tribune, shows that wood was given out or sold by weight, as it is at present at Amsterdam. On the other hand, the coctilia were measured like coals. Martial, lib. xiii. ep. 15: Ligna acapna:--Return to passage

Si vicina tibi Nomento rura coluntur, Ad villam monco, rustice, ligna feres.

It would seem that in the above-mentioned neighbourhood there was no wood proper for fuel, so that people were obliged to purchase that which had been dried. Some hence conclude that the acapna must not have been dear, because it is recommended to a countryman. But the advice here given is addressed to the possessor of a farm who certainly could afford to purchase dried wood.

[933] Jul. Capitol. in Vita Pertin. cap. iii. Capitolinus says before, that the father carried on lignariam negotiationem. See the annotations of Salmasius and Casaubon.Return to passage

[934] Horat. lib. i. sat. 5, 79.Return to passage

[935] Plutarch. Apophthegm. p. 180.Return to passage

[936] Plutarch. Sympos. lib. vi. 7.Return to passage

[937] Æl. Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 31.Return to passage

[938] See also Tavernier, Voyages, vol. i.--Olearius, vol. i.--Schweigger’s Reisebeschreibung nach Constantinopel und Jerusalem, p. 264.--Voyage de Chardin, 12mo, vol. iv. p. 236.--Voyage Littéraire de la Grèce, par M. Guys, Paris, 1776, 2 vols. 8vo, i. p. 34. Because this author is one of the latest who has taken the trouble to compare the manners of the ancient and modern Greeks, I shall here give his account at full length:--“The Greeks have no chimneys in the apartments of their houses; they make use only of a chaffing-dish, which is placed in the middle of the apartment to warm it, or for the benefit of those who choose to approach it. This custom is very ancient throughout all the East. The Romans had no other method of warming their chambers; and it has been preserved by the Turks. Λαμπτὴρ, says Hesychius, was a chaffing-dish placed in the middle of a room, on which dry wood was burned to warm it, and resinous wood to give light. This chaffing-dish was supported, as those at present, by a tripod; lamps were not introduced till long after. To secure the face from any inconvenience, and from the heat of the chaffing-dish, oftentimes dangerous, the tendour was invented. This is a square table under which the fire is placed. It is covered with a carpet which hangs down to the floor, and with another of silk, more or less rich, by way of ornament. People sit around it either on a sofa or on the pavement, and they can at the same time put their hands and their feet under the covering, which, as it encloses the chaffing-dish on all sides, preserves a gentle and lasting heat. The tendour is destined principally for the use of the women, who during the winter pass the whole day around it, employed either in embroidering or in receiving the visits of their friends.”Return to passage

[939] As a proof of this, Faber, in his Archæologie der Hebräer, Halle, 1773, 8vo, p. 432, quotes Kelim, v. 1, and Maimonides and Bartenora, p. 36, Tamid, c. 50. Compare Othon. Lex Rabbin. p. 85.Return to passage

[940] As it would be tedious to transcribe all these passages, I shall, as examples, give only the following:--Return to passage

Dissolve frigus, ligna super foco Large reponens.--Horat. lib. i. od. 9.

These lines show that the poet had an aversion to cold when enjoying his bottle, and that he wished for a good fire; but they do not inform us whether the hearth, focus, had a chimney. We learn as little from the advice of Cato, c. 143: “Focum purum circumversum quotidie, priusquam cubitum eat, habeat.” It was certainly wholesome to rake the fire together at night, but it might have burned either with or without a chimney. Cicero, Epist. Famil. lib. vii. 10: “Valde metuo ne frigeas in hibernis; quam ob rem camino luculento utendum censeo.” Cicero perhaps understood under that term some well-known kind of stove which afforded a strong heat. Suetonius, in Vita Vitellii, cap. viii.: “Nec ante in Prætorium rediit, quam flagrante triclinio ex conceptu camini.” As Vitellius was proclaimed emperor in January, a warm dining-room was certainly necessary. Du Cange in his Glossarium quotes the word fumariolum from the Paræneticum ad Pœnitentiam of the Spaniard Pacianus; but the latter takes the whole passage from Tertullian, who wrote more than a century before. Sidonius Apollin. lib. ii. epist. i.: “A cripto porticu in hyemale triclinium venitur, quod arcuatili camino sæpe ignis animatus pulla fuligine infecit.” No one can determine with certainty the meaning of arcuatilis caminus. A covering made of a thin plate of metal, or a screen, was perhaps placed over a portable stove; we however learn, that even where the arcuatilis caminus was used, the beauty of the dining-room was destroyed by smoke and soot. Ammianus Marcell. lib. xxv. in the end of the life of Jovian: “Fertur recente calce cubiculi illiti ferre odorem noxium neqnivisse, vel extuberato capite periisse succensione prunarum immensa.” This in an apartment where there was a stove or a chimney would have been impossible.

The passage of Athenæus, lib. xii. p. 519, which speaks of πύελοι, will admit of various explanations. Dalechamp thinks that they were the poëles of the French (something like our stoves). Casaubon says they were bathing-tubs. This opinion is in some measure confirmed by Suidas, who gives that meaning to πύελος; and by Jul. Pollux, in whom it occurs in the same sense more than once. Lipsius however rejects these explanations, and considers πύελοι to have been thecæ, or vessels similar to those which in low German are called riken, and which, instead of our stoves, are much used in Holland by the women, who seldom approach the chimney.

[941] Seneca, ep. 90.Return to passage

[942] Senec. De Provident. p. 138. Cicero ad Fratrem, lib. iii. ep. i. Plin. lib. ii. ep. 17.Return to passage

[943] Statii Sylv. lib. i. 5, 17.Return to passage

[944] Pallad. De Re Rust. lib. i. 20, p. 876.Return to passage

[945] Digestor. lib. viii. tit. 2, 13.Return to passage

[946] A passage from And. Baccii Liber de thermis, fol. p. 263, contains information much of the same kind. See also Robortelli Laconici seu sudationis, explicatio, in Grævii Thes. Antiq. Rom. xii. p. 385. Vitruvius, cum annotat. G. Philandri, Lugd. 1586, 4to, p. 279. Philander says that the ancients conveyed from subterranean stoves, into the apartments above, the steam of boiling water; but of this I have found no proof. If this be true, the Roman baths must have been like the Russian sweating-baths. [Many of the large establishments and work-shops in this country are now heated by means of hot air, hot water, or steam circulating through a ramified system of pipes.]Return to passage

[947] Juliani op. Lips. 1696, fol. p. 341.Return to passage

[948] Zanetti, p. 78, quotes a charter of that year, in which the following words occur: “Cum tota sua cella et domo, et caminatis cum suo solario, et aliis caminatis.”Return to passage

[949] Such is the opinion of Muratori, Antiq. Ital. Med. Æv. ii. p. 418.Return to passage

[950] In Muratori, Script. Ital. vol. ix.Return to passage

[951] Ibid.Return to passage

[952] Ibid, vol. xvi. p. 582.Return to passage

[953] Reiske ad Ceremon. aulæ Byzant. p. 145.Return to passage

[954] The following passages of old writers, collected by Du Cange, allude to this law. Statuta Leichefeldensis ecclesiæ in Anglia: “Est autem ignitegium qualibet nocte per annum pulsandum hora septima post meridiem.” Statuta Massil. lib. v. cap. 4: “Statuimus hac præsenti constitutione perpetuo observandum, quod nullus de cætero vadat per civitatem Massiliæ vel suburbia civitatis contigua de nocte, ex quo campana, quæ dicitur Salvaterra, sonata fuerit, sine lumine.” Charta Johannis electi archiepisc. Upsaliensis, an. 1291: “Statuimus, ut nullus extra domum post ignitegium seu coverfu exeat.”Return to passage

[955] Pol. Vergil. De Rer. Invent. lib. vi. c. 12. Lugd. 1664, 12mo, p. 460.Return to passage

[956] The year is probably 1457; Calixtus was elected to the papal chair in 1455.Return to passage

[957] Dell’ origine di alcune arti principali appresso i Veneziani. Venezia, 1758, 4to, p. 80.Return to passage

[958] Historie Fiorentine, lib. xii. cap. 121.Return to passage

[959] This Chronicon Patavinum may be found in Muratori, Scriptor. Rerum Ital. vol. xvii.Return to passage

[960] Gazoni Piazze Universale, Venet. 1610, 4to, p. 364.Return to passage

[961] A writer in the German Encyclopedie conjectures that the Italian architects employed in Germany to build houses and palaces of stone, brought with them people acquainted with the art of constructing larger and more commodious chimneys than those commonly used.Return to passage

[962] Dictionnaire des Arts et des Métiers, par Jaubert, vol. iv. p. 534.Return to passage

[963]

... Ces honnêtes enfans Qui de Savoye arrivent tous les ans, Et dont la main légèrement essuye Ces longs canaux, engorgés par la suie.--VOLTAIRE.

[964] “C’est ainsi que se ramonent toutes les cheminées de Paris; et des régisseurs n’ont enrégimenté ces petits malheureux, que pour gagner encore sur leur médiocre salaire. Puissent ces ineptes et barbares entrepreneurs se ruiner de fond en comble; ainsi que tous ceux qui ont sollicité des privileges exclusifs!”--Tableau de Paris. Hamburg, 1781, tom. ii. p. 249. [Owing to many serious accidents which attended the climbing of chimneys, this practice was put down in this country by Act of Parliament, (3 & 4 Victoria, c. 85. sec. 2.). The use of machinery is now substituted, but does not perform the operation so effectively as the old mode, especially where the flues are in angles.]Return to passage

HUNGARY WATER

Hungary water is spirit of wine distilled upon rosemary, and which therefore contains the essential oil and powerful aroma of that plant. To be really good the spirit of wine ought to be very strong and the rosemary fresh; and if that be the case, the leaves are as proper as the flowers, which according to the prescription of some should only be employed. It is likewise necessary that the spirit of wine be distilled several times over the rosemary; but that process is too troublesome and expensive to admit of this water being disposed of at the low price for which it is usually sold; and it is certain that the greater part of it is nothing else than common spirit, united with the essence of rosemary in the simplest manner. In general, it is only mixed with a few drops of the oil. For a long time past this article has been brought to us principally from France, where it is prepared, particularly at Beaucaire, Montpelier, and other places in Languedoc, where that plant grows in great abundance.

The name, l’eau de la reine d’Hongrie, seems to signify that this water, so celebrated for its medicinal virtues, is an Hungarian invention; and we read in many books that the receipt for preparing it was given to a queen of Hungary by a hermit, or as others say, by an angel, who appeared to her in a garden all entrance to which was shut, in the form of a hermit or a youth[965]. Some call the queen St. Isabella[966]; but those who pretend to be best acquainted with the circumstance affirm that Elizabeth wife of Charles Robert king of Hungary, and daughter of Uladislaus II. king of Poland, who died in 1380 or 1381, was the inventress. By often washing with this spirit of rosemary, when in the seventieth year of her age, she was cured, as we are told, of the gout and an universal lameness; so that she not only lived to pass eighty, but became so lively and beautiful that she was courted by the king of Poland, who was then a widower, and who wished to make her his second wife.

John George Hoyer[967] says that the receipt for preparing this water, written by queen Elizabeth’s own hand, in golden characters, is still preserved in the Imperial library at Vienna. But it has been already remarked by others[968] that Hoyer is mistaken, and that he does not properly remember the account given of the receipt. It is to be found for the first time, as far as I know, in a small book by John Prevot, which, after his death in 1631, was published by his two sons at Frankfort in 1659[969].

One may easily see that Prevot mistook this Elizabeth for St. Elizabeth, the daughter of king Andrew II., who was never queen of Hungary, but died wife of a landgrave of Thuringia in 1235. But respecting Elizabeth, the wife of king Charles Robert, we know from the information of Hungarian writers[970], that in her will she really did mention two breviaries, one of which she bequeathed to her daughter-in-law, and the other to one Clara von Pukur, with this stipulation, however, that after her death it should belong to a monastery at Buda. It is not impossible, therefore, that one of these books may have come into the hands of Podacather’s ancestors.

I must however confess, that respecting this pretended invention of the Hungarian queen I have doubts; it may be readily conjectured that this Elizabeth must have been extremely vain; but when she wished to make posterity believe that in the seventieth, or seventy-second year of her age she became so sound and so beautiful that a king, at that time a widower, grew enamoured of her, we may justly conclude that she was more than vain--that she was perhaps childish. I have taken the trouble to search for the king, then a widower, who paid his addresses to Elizabeth, but my labour has proved fruitless. This proposal of marriage must have been made about the year 1370; but Casimir III., brother of the Hungarian Elizabeth, reigned in Poland till that year, and was succeeded by her son Louis, who died after her in 1382; and the throne then remained vacant for three years.

It is rather singular that the name of aqua-vitæ, and the practice of distilling spirit of wine upon aromatic herbs, should be known in Hungary so early as the fourteenth century, though I will not pretend to affirm the contrary. But I consider it as more remarkable that the botanists of the seventeenth century should have spoken of and extolled the various properties of rosemary without mentioning Hungary water. It cannot however be denied, that in the sixteenth century, long before Prevot, Zapata[971], an Italian physician, taught the method of preparing rosemary-water: and he has even told us that it was known, though imperfectly, to Arnoldus de Villa Nova; but he does not say that it was an Hungarian invention. It appears to me most probable, at present, that the name l’eau de la reine d’Hongrie, was chosen by those who in later times prepared rosemary-water for sale, in order to give greater consequence and credit to their commodity; as various medicines, some years ago, were extolled in the gazettes under the title of Pompadour, though the celebrated lady from whose name they derived their importance, certainly neither ever saw them nor used them.

FOOTNOTES

[965] Universal Lexicon, vol. xlix. p. 1340.Return to passage

[966] Traité de la Chemie, par N. le Febure. Leyde, 1669, 2 vols. 12mo, i. p. 474.Return to passage

[967] In his notes to Blumentrost’s Haus- und Reise-apotheke. Leipzig, 1716, 8vo, cap. 16, p. 47.Return to passage

[968] Succincta Medicorum Hungariæ et Transilvaniæ Biographia, ex adversariis St. Wespremi. Wien, 1778, 8vo, p. 213.Return to passage

[969] Selectiora remedia multiplici usu comprobata, quæ inter secreta medica jure recenseas. In page 6 the following passage occurs: “For the gout in the hands and the feet. As the wonderful virtue of the remedy given below has been confirmed to me by the cases of many, I shall relate by what good fortune I happened to meet with it. In the year 1606 I saw among the books of Francis Podacather, of a noble Cyprian family, with whom I was extremely intimate, a very old breviary, which he held in high veneration, because, he said, it had been presented by St. Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, to some of his ancestors, as a testimony of the friendship which subsisted between them. In the beginning of this book he showed me a remedy for the gout written by the queen’s own hand, in the following words, which I copied:--Return to passage

“‘I Elizabeth, queen of Hungary, being very infirm and much troubled with the gout in the seventy-second year of my age, used for a year this receipt given to me by an ancient hermit whom I never saw before nor since; and was not only cured, but recovered my strength, and appeared to all so remarkably beautiful, that the king of Poland asked me in marriage, he being a widower and I a widow. I however refused him for the love of my Lord Jesus Christ, from one of whose angels I believe I received the remedy. The receipt is as follows:

“‘℞. Take of aqua vitæ, four times distilled, three parts, and of the tops and flowers of rosemary two parts: put these together in a close vessel, let them stand in a gentle heat fifty hours, and then distil them. Take one dram of this in the morning once every week, either in your food or drink, and let your face and the diseased limb be washed with it every morning.

“‘It renovates the strength, brightens the spirits, purifies the marrow and nerves, restores and preserves the sight, and prolongs life.’ Thus far from the Breviary.”--Then follows a confirmation which Prevot gives from his own experience.

[970] Medicorum Hungariæ Biographia, ut supra, p. 214.Return to passage

[971] The book of Zapata, who is not noticed in the Gelehrten Lexicon, was printed at Rome, as Haller says in his Biblioth. Botan. vol. i. p. 368, in the year 1586; and other editions are mentioned in Boerhavii Methodus Studii Medici, p. 728 and 869. I have now before me, Joh. Bapt. Zapatæ, Medici Romani, Mirabilia seu Secreta Medico-chirurgica--per Davidem Spleissium. Ulmiæ, 1696. The passage above alluded to occurs in page 49.Return to passage

CORK

Those who are accustomed to value things used in common life only according to the price for which they can be purchased, will perhaps imagine that my subject must be nearly exhausted when I think it worth my while to entertain my readers with a matter so inconsiderable. Cork, however, is a substance of such a singular property, that no other has yet been found which can be so generally employed with the same advantage; and before the use of it was known, people were obliged on many occasions to supply the want of it by means which to us would appear extremely troublesome.

Cork is a body remarkably light, can be easily compressed, expands again by its elasticity as soon as the compressing power is removed, and therefore fills or stops up very closely that space into which it has been driven by force. It may be easily cut into all forms; and though it abounds with pores, which are the cause of its lightness, it suffers neither water, beer, nor any common liquid to escape through it, and it is only very slowly and after a considerable length of time that it can be penetrated even by spirits. Its numerous pores seem to be too small to afford a passage to the finest particles of water and wine, which can with greater facility ooze through more compact wood that has larger or wider pores[972].

Cork is the exterior bark of a tree, belonging to the genus of the oak, which grows wild in the southern parts of Europe, particularly France, Spain, Portugal and Italy[973]. When the tree is about twenty-six years old it is fit to be barked, and this can be done successively every eight years[974]. The bark always grows up again, and its quality improves with the increasing age of the tree. It is commonly singed a little over a strong fire or glowing coals, and laid to soak a certain time in water, after which it is placed under stones in order to be pressed straight.

This tree, as well as its use, was known to the Greeks and the Romans. By the former it was called phellus. Theophrastus reckons it among the oaks, and says that it has a thick fleshy bark, which must be stripped off every three years to prevent it from perishing. He adds, that it was so light as never to sink in water, and on that account could be used with great advantage for a variety of purposes[975]. The only circumstance which on the first consideration can excite any doubt of the phellus being our cork-tree, is, that he expressly says it lost its leaves annually, whereas our cork-tree retains them. In another passage however he calls it an evergreen[976]. This apparent contradiction several commentators have endeavoured to clear up, but their labour seems unnecessary; for there is a species of our cork-tree which really drops its leaves. Linnæus did not think this species worth his notice; but it has been accurately observed by Clusius and Matthiolus[977], and its existence is confirmed by Miller[978]. As Theophrastus[979], Pliny[980], Varro[981] and others mention a common oak which always retains its leaves, it appears clear to me that the first-mentioned author, where he speaks of evergreens, meant our common species of the cork-tree, and that extraordinary kind of oak; but in the other passage that species which drops its leaves in winter.

That the suber of the Romans was our cork-tree, is generally and with justice admitted. Pliny relates of it, in the clearest manner, every thing said by Theophrastus[982] of the phellus[983]; and we find by his account, that cork at the period when he wrote was applied to as many purposes as at present[984].

At that time fishermen made floats to their nets of cork, that is, they affixed pieces of cork to the rope which formed the upper edge of the net, and which it was necessary should be kept at the surface of the water, in the same manner as is done at present[985]. The use of cork for fishing-nets is mentioned by Ausonius[986]; and Alciphron describes so abundant a capture that the net and the cork floats sunk by the weight. This use, however, was much limited by the high price of cork; and small boards of light wood, such as that of the pine, aspen-tree, lime-tree, and poplar, were employed in its stead[987]. The wood of the Marum arborescens is used as floats in Guiana, and that of the Hibiscus cuspidatus in Otaheite[988]. The German and Swedish fishermen, and also the Cossacks, use for the same purpose the bark of the black poplar; but the Dutch and Hanoverians, who fish on the Weser, employ for their nets a kind of wood called in Holland toll-hout. It is a wood of a reddish-brown colour, extremely light, and of a very fine grain, which the Dutch, who export it to Germany, procure from the Baltic. At Amsterdam it costs a stiver per pound; but I have not yet been able to learn what wood it properly is.

Another use to which cork was applied, according to Pliny, was for anchor-buoys. “Usus ejus ancoralibus maxime navium.” These words Hardouin has not explained; and Scheffer[989], where he speaks of anchors, and what belongs to them, takes no notice of cork. Gesner, however, has attempted an explanation[990], but what he says is, in my opinion, not satisfactory. He certainly could not mean that it was employed to render anchors lighter. According to my idea, they may be easily made light enough without cork, and perhaps they can never be made too heavy. The true explanation of this passage is, that it was used for making buoys, called ancoralia, which were fixed to the cable, and by floating on the surface of the water, over the anchor, pointed out the place where it lay[991]. Our navigators use for that purpose a large but light block of wood, which, in order that it may float better, is often made hollow[992]. A large cask also is sometimes employed. The Dutch sailors call these blocks of wood boei or boeye; and hence comes their proverb, “Hy heeft een kop als een boei,” he has a head like a buoy; he is a blockhead.

A third use of cork among the Romans was its being made into soles, which were put into their shoes in order to secure the feet from water, especially in winter; and as high heels were not then introduced, the ladies who wished to appear taller than they had been formed by nature, put plenty of cork under them[993].

The practice of employing cork for making jackets to assist one in swimming, is also very old; for we are informed that the Roman whom Camillus sent to the Capitol when besieged by the Gauls, put on a light dress, and took cork with him under it, because, to avoid being taken by the enemy, it was necessary that he should swim through the Tiber. When he arrived at the river, he bound his clothes upon his head, and, placing the cork under him, was so fortunate as to succeed in his attempt[994].

The most extensive and principal use of cork at present, is for stoppers to bottles. This was not entirely unknown to the Romans, for Pliny says expressly, that it served to stop vessels of every kind; and instances of its being employed for that purpose may be seen in Cato[995] and Horace[996]. Its application to this use, however, seems not to have been very common, else cork-stoppers would have been oftener mentioned by the authors who have written on agriculture and cookery, and also in the works of the ancient poets. We everywhere find directions given to close up wine-casks and other vessels with pitch[997], clay, gypsum or potters-earth, or to fill the upper part of the vessel with oil or honey, in order to exclude the air from those liquors which one wished to preserve[998]. In the passages therefore already quoted, where cork is named, mention is made also of pitching. The reason of this I believe to be, that the ancients used for their wine large earthen vessels with wide mouths, which could not be stopped sufficiently close by means of cork. Wooden casks were then unknown, or at least scarce, as Italy produced little timber, otherwise these vessels would have been stopped with wood, as is the case at present. The practice of drawing off wine for daily consumption, from the large vessels into which it is first put, into such smaller vessels as can be easily corked, was then not prevalent[999]. The ancients drew off from their large jars into cups or pitchers whatever quantity of wine they thought necessary for the time, instead of which the moderns use bottles. It appears to have been customary at the French court, about the year 1258, when grand entertainments were given, and more wine-vessels had been opened than were emptied, that the remainder became a perquisite of the grand-bouteiller[1000].

Stoppers of cork seem to have been first introduced after the invention of glass-bottles, and of these I find no mention before the fifteenth century; for the amphoræ vitreæ diligenter gypsatæ of Petronius[1001], to the necks of which were affixed labels, containing the name and age of the wine, appear to have been large jars, and to have formed part of the many uncommon articles by which the voluptuary Trimalchio wished to distinguish himself. It is however singular, that these convenient vessels were not thought of at an earlier period, especially as among the small funeral urns of the ancients, many are to be found which in shape resemble our bottles[1002]. In the figure of the Syracusan wine-flasks, I think I can discover their origin from these urns. Charpentier[1003] quotes from a writing of the year 1387, an expression which seems to allude to one of our glass bottles; but, when attentively considered, it may be easily discovered that cups or drinking-glasses are meant. The name boutiaux or boutilles, occurs in the French language for the first time in the fifteenth century; but were it even older it would prove nothing, as it signified originally, and even still signifies, vessels of clay or metal, and particularly of leather[1004]. Such vessels filled with wine, which travellers were accustomed to suspend from their saddles, could be stopped with a piece of wood, or closed by means of wooden or metal tops screwed on them, which are still used for earthen-pitchers. In the year 1553, when C. Stephanus wrote his Prædium Rusticum, cork stoppers must have been very little known, else he would not have said that in his time cork in France was used principally for soles (p. 578). In the time of Lottichius, rich people however had glass flasks with tin mouths, which could be stopped sufficiently close without cork; and these flasks appear to have been as thin as the Syracusan wine-bottles; for he adds, that it was necessary to wrap them round with rushes or straw[1005].

Flasks covered with basket-work must have been common among the Greeks, if it be certain that πυτίνη signifies a flask of this kind. It appears indeed to do so, because Hesychius says it was a plaited wine-vessel, like the baskets which prisoners were accustomed to make. Suidas, however, states that it was a vessel woven of twigs, named in his time φλασκεῖον, from which is derived our word flask. It is probable that these wine-vessels covered with basket-work were only of earthenware, as glass ones were at that time costly and scarce. But I do not think it can be proved that a flask of this kind was called by the Romans tinia.

In the shops of the apothecaries in Germany, cork stoppers began first to be used about the end of the seventeenth century. Before that period they used stoppers of wax, which were not only much more expensive, but also far more troublesome.

That the use of cork for stoppers was not known in the sixteenth century may be proved from this circumstance, that it is mentioned neither by Ruellius[1006] nor Aldrovandi[1007], though they describe all the other purposes to which this substance was applied. How great the consumption of it is at present, will appear from the quantity used by the directors of the springs at Niederselters alone; who in the year 1781 employed 2,208,000 stoppers, each thousand of which cost four florins, making a total of 8832 florins. They were furnished by a merchant at Strasburg, who was obliged to take back the refuse, which he then caused to be cut on his own account into smaller stoppers, and many of these could be used by the people at the springs. The experiment also was once made of causing the corks to be cut on account of the directors of the springs; but the carriage of the refuse became too dear, and there was no sale for the stoppers of the apothecary phials which were made of them.

In later times, some other vegetable productions have been found which can be employed instead of cork for the last-mentioned purpose. Among these is the wood of a tree common in South America, particularly in moist places, which is called there monbin or monbain, and by botanists Spondias lutea. This wood was brought to England in great abundance for that use. The spongy root of a North American tree, known by the name of nyssa, is also used for the same end, as are the roots of liquorice, which on that account is much cultivated in Sclavonia, and exported to other countries, and likewise the black poplar, for its bark is employed by the Cossacks[1008] as stoppers to their flasks, and the Æschynomene lagenaria, which is used instead of cork in Cochin-China[1009].

[That most useful substance, caoutchouc, now replaces cork for numerous purposes, and is superior to it in almost every respect, especially in its greater elasticity, in being subject to less injury from the action of many substances, and but slightly affected by moisture or dryness. It also keeps better, and is not much more expensive. The quantity of stoppers now manufactured by the Patent Caoutchouc Company is perfectly astonishing.]

FOOTNOTES

[972] What is here observed in regard to the pores of cork has been stated, in general, by Lucretius, vi. 5984.Return to passage

[973] Duhamel, Traité des Arbres et Arbustes, Tozzetti, Viaggi, iv. p. 278.Return to passage

[974] [In MacCulloch’s Dictionary the word every is changed into for, and the author then proceeds to observe, that “This erroneous statement having been copied into the article Cork in Rees’ Cyclopædia, has thence been transplanted into a number of other works!” The mistake, however, is wrongly attributed to Beckmann.]Return to passage

[975] Histor. Plantar. lib. iii. cap. 16. He repeats the same thing lib. iv. cap. 18, where he remarks as an exception, that the cork-tree does not die after it has lost its bark, but becomes more vigorous. In the southern parts of France the cork-trees are barked every eight, nine or ten years.Return to passage

[976] Lib. iii. cap. 4. This difficulty the commentators have endeavoured to remove by reading here φελλόδρυς instead of the two words φελλὸς and δρῦς which are separated; and indeed φελλόδρυς occurs in other parts of the same work among the evergreens, lib. i. cap. 15.Return to passage

[977] Clusius in Rar. Plantar. Histor. lib. i. cap. 14, describes this tree as he found it without leaves in the month of April in the Pyrenees near Bayonne. Theophrastus, p. 234, says, “The cork-tree, φελλὸς, which drops its leaves γίνεται ἐν Τυῤῥηνίᾳ:” but the Aldine manuscript and that of Basle have Πυῤῥηνίᾳ. The latter reading is condemned by Robert Constant and others: but though the cork-tree is indeed indigenous in Tyrrhenia or Etruria, I see no reason why Πυῤῥηνίᾳ should not be retained, as it is equally certain that the tree grows in the Pyrenees, and that it there loses its leaves according to the observation of Clusius. If, on the other hand, we read Τυῤῥηνίᾳ, this is opposed by the experience of Theophrastus; for in Italy, as well as in France and Spain, the tree keeps its leaves the whole winter through. Stapel therefore has preferred the word Πυῤῥηνίᾳ. Labat, who saw the tree both in the Pyrenees and in Italy, says that in the former it drops its leaves in winter, and in the latter preserves them. According to Jaussin (Mémoires sur les évènemens, arrivés dans l’Isle de Corse. Lausanne, 1759, 8vo, ii. p. 398) it is in Corsica an evergreen; and Carter (Reise von Gibraltar nach Malaga, Leipsic, 1799, 8vo, p. 190) says that the case is the same in Spain, but he expressly adds that beyond the Alps it loses its leaves in autumn.Return to passage

[978] In his Gardener’s Dictionary. Bauhin, in his Pinax, p. 424, mentions this species particularly.Return to passage

[979] Hist. Plant. lib. i. cap. 15.Return to passage

[980] Lib. xvi. cap. 21.Return to passage

[981] De Re Rustica, i. cap. 7.Return to passage

[982] Lib. xvi. cap. 8.Return to passage

[983] The botanists of the seventeenth century, who paid more attention to the names of the ancients than those of the present time, say that the cork-tree is in Greek called also ἴψος, or ἰψὸς, which word is not to be found in Ernesti’s dictionary. I have found it only once in Theophrastus, Histor. Plantar. lib. iii. cap. 6, where those plants are named which blow late. Because Pliny, lib. xvi. cap. 25, says tardissimo germine suber; ἰpψὸς is considered to be the same as φελλός. Hesychius however says that ἰψὸς in some authors signifies ivy.Return to passage

[984] Our German word Kork, as well as the substance itself, came to us from Spain, where the latter is called chorcha de alcornoque. It is, without doubt, originally derived from cortex of the Latins, who gave that appellation to cork without any addition. Horace says, Od. iii. 9, “Tu levior cortice;” and Pliny tells us, “Non infacete Græci (suberem) corticis arborem appellant.” These last words are quoted by C. Stephanus in his Prædium Rusticum, p. 578, and Ruellius De Natura Stirpium, p. 174, and again p. 256, as if the Greeks called the women, on account of their cork soles, of which I shall speak hereafter, cortices arborum. This gives me reason to conjecture a different reading in Pliny, and indeed I find in the same edition already quoted, the words cortices arborum. This variation ought to have been remarked by Hardouin.Return to passage

[985] Plin. p. 7.Return to passage

[986] Mosella, 246.Return to passage

[987] Linnæi Flora Suec. p. 358. Gmelin’s Reise durch Russland, i. p. 138. It is a mistake in Duroi, Harbkescher Baumzucht, ii. p. 141, that ropes for fishing-nets are prepared from this bark.Return to passage

[988] Parkinson’s Voyage to the South Seas, 1773, 4to.Return to passage

[989] De Militia Navali Veterum. Upsaliæ, 1654, 4to, lib. ii. cap. 5.Return to passage

[990] In Stephens’s Thesaurus he says, “Usus ancoralibus navium; int. sustinendis, et minuendo pondere ancorarum.”Return to passage

[991] Pausanias, viii. 12, p. 623, where he speaks of the different kinds of oak in Arcadia. When any one had the misfortune to fall into the sea, the cork affixed to the anchor, ancoralia, was thrown overboard, in order that the person in danger might catch hold of it. This we learn from the account of Lucian (Epist. i. 1, p. 7), when two men, one of whom had fallen into the sea and another who jumped after him to afford him assistance, were both saved by these means.Return to passage

[992] And to conceal contraband goods in them, of which I have seen instances during my travels.Return to passage

[993] Xenophon De Tuenda Re Famil. and Clemens Alexand. lib. iii. Pæda.Return to passage

[994] Plutarchus in Vita Camilli.Return to passage

[995] De Re Rustica, cap. 120.Return to passage

[996] Lib. iii. od. 8, 10.Return to passage

[997] Before cork came to be used for this purpose pitching was more necessary, and therefore mention of pitch occurs so often in the Roman writers on agriculture. When the farmer, says Virgil (Georg. i. 275), has brought his productions to the city, he carries back articles of every kind, such, for example, as pitch. On such occasions our poets would have mentioned articles entirely different. Strabo (lib. v. p. 334) also extols Italy, because together with wine it had a sufficiency of pitch, so that the price of wine was not rendered dearer.Return to passage

[998] As proofs of this may everywhere be found, it is hardly worth while to quote them. Columella, xii. 12, teaches the manner of preparing cement for stopping up wine-casks. The earthen wine-jars found at Pompeii appear to have had oil poured over them, and to have had no other care bestowed upon them. In Italy, even at present, large flasks have no stoppers, but are filled up with oil.Return to passage

[999] Alexand. ab Alex. Dier. Gen. v. 21, p. 302. When the Romans went out to the chase, they carried with them some wine in a laguncula.--Plin. Epist. i. 6. p. 22. I do not know however that these flasks were of glass; all those I have seen were made of clay or wood. See Pompa De Instrum. Fundi, cap. 17, in the end of Gesner’s edition of Scriptores Rei Rust. ii. p. 1187.Return to passage

[1000] Le Grand d’Aussy, Histoire de la Vie Privée des François, ii. p. 367.

[1001] Petron. Sat. cap. xxxiv. p. 86. In the paintings of Herculaneum I find many wide-mouthed pitchers, with handles, like decanters, but no figure that resembles our flasks.

[1002] Aringhi Roma Subterranea. Romæ, 1651. fol. i. p. 502, where may be seen an account of a flask with a round body and a very long neck.

[1003] Glossarium Novum, i. p. 1182: “le dit Jaquet print un conouffle de voirre, ou il avoit du vin ... et de fait en but.”

[1004] Grand d’Aussy quotes from Chronique Scandaleuse de Louis XI. “Des bouteilles de cuyr.” That word however is of German extraction, though we have received it back from the French somewhat changed, like many other German things. It is evidently derived from butte, botte, buta, buticula, buticella, which occur in the middle ages. See C. G. Schwarzii Exercitat. de Butigulariis. Altorfii, 1723, 4to, p. 5.

[1005] See his Observations on Petronius, p. 259.

[1006] De Natura Stirpium, p. 256.

[1007] Dendrologia, p. 194.

[1008] Gmelin’s Reise durch Russland, i. p. 138. Pallas, Flora Russica, i. p. 66.

[1009] Loureiro Flora Cochin-Chin. p. 447.

APOTHECARIES

The history of the materia medica is a subject fit to be undertaken only by physicians like Baldinger, Hensler, Mohsen[1010], and Gruner, who to an intimate acquaintance with what belongs to their own profession, have united a knowledge of every other branch of science. By making this acknowledgment, I wish to guard against the imputation of vanity, which I might incur as attempting to encroach on the province of such learned men. That however is not the case. My intention is only to lay before the public what I have collected respecting this subject, because I have reason to flatter myself, that, however trifling, it may be of some use until a complete history be obtained; and because I may have met with some scattered information, which, without my research, might have escaped the notice of abler writers. Whoever is acquainted with such labour, will at any rate allow that this is possible; and I hope the following essay towards a history of apothecaries will not prove unacceptable to my readers.

That the medicines prescribed by the Greek and Roman physicians for their patients were prepared by themselves is so well known, that I think it unnecessary to produce proofs with which no one can be unacquainted who has read Theophrastus, Hippocrates, and Galen. They caused those herbs, of which almost the whole materia medica then consisted, to be collected by others; and we have reason to believe that the gathering and selling of medicinal plants must have at an early period been converted into a distinct employment, especially as many of them being exotics, it was necessary to procure them from remote countries, which every physician had not an opportunity of visiting; and as some of them were applied to a variety of purposes, they were sought after by others as well as by medical practitioners. Several of them were employed in cookery and for seasoning different dishes; many in dyeing and painting, some of them as cosmetics, others for perfumes, some for ointments, which were much used in the numerous baths, and not a few of them may have been employed also in other arts and manufactures. It must have been very convenient for the physicians to purchase from these dealers in herbs, such articles as they had occasion to use; but it is probable, and can even be proved, that these people soon injured them in their profession, by encroaching on their business. In the course of time they acquired a knowledge of the healing virtues of their commodities, and of the preparation they required, which was then extremely simple: and many of them began to sell compounded medicines, and to boast of possessing secrets more beneficial to mankind. To these dealers in herbs belong the pigmentarii, seplasiarii, pharmacopolæ, medicamentarii, and others who were perhaps thus distinguished by separate names on account of some very trifling circumstances in which they differed, or by dealing in one particular article more than in another. Some of these names also may possibly have been used only at certain periods, or in some places more than in others; and perhaps it would be fruitless labour to attempt to define their difference correctly. That the pigmentarii dealt in medicines is proved by the law which established a punishment for such as sold any one poison through mistake[1011]. The herbs which Vegetius[1012] prescribes for the diseases of cattle were to be bought from the seplasiarii; and that they sold also medicines ready prepared is proved by the reproach thrown out by Pliny against the physicians of his time, that instead of making up their medicines themselves as formerly, they purchased them from the seplasiarii, without so much as knowing of what they were composed[1013]. That the pharmacopolæ carried on a like trade appears evident from their name; but people of judgement placed no confidence in them, and they were despised on account of their impudent boasting, and the extravagant praises they bestowed on their commodities[1014]. The medicamentarii do not often occur, but we are given to understand by Pliny[1015], that they followed an employment of the same nature; and it appears that they must have been very worthless, for in the Theodosian code, male and female poisoners are called medicamentarii and medicamentariæ[1016].

It may be readily perceived that these herb-dealers had a greater resemblance to our grocers, druggists, or mountebanks, than to our apothecaries. It is well known that the word apotheca signified any kind of store, magazine, or warehouse, and that the proprietor or keeper of such a store was called apothecarius[1017]. It would be a very great mistake, therefore, if in writings of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, where these expressions occur, we should understand under the latter apothecaries such as ours are at present[1018]. At these periods, those were often called apothecaries who at courts and in the houses of great people prepared for the table various preserves, particularly fruit incrusted with sugar, and who on that account may be considered as confectioners. What peculiarly distinguishes our apothecaries is, that they sell drugs used in medicine, and prepare from them different compounds according to the prescriptions given by physicians and others. But here arises a question: When did physicians begin to give up entirely the preparation of medicines to such apothecaries, who must now be more than herb-dealers, and must understand chemistry? And when did the apothecaries acquire an exclusive title to that business and to their present name? It is probable that physicians gradually became accustomed to employ such assistance for the sake of their own convenience, when they found in their neighbourhood a druggist in whose skill they could confide, and whose interest they wished to promote, by resigning in his favour that occupation.

Conring asserts, without any proof, but not however without probability[1019], that the physicians in Africa first began to give up the preparation of medicines after their prescriptions to other ingenious men; and that this was customary so early as the time of Avenzoar in the eleventh century. Should that be the case, it would appear that this practice must have been first introduced into Spain and the lower part of Italy, as far as the possessions of the Saracens then extended, by the Arabian physicians who accompanied the Caliphs or Arabian princes. It is probable, therefore, that many Arabic terms of art were by these means introduced into pharmacy and chemistry, for the origin of which we are indebted to that nation, and which have been still retained and adopted. Hence it may be explained why the first known apothecaries were to be found in the lower part of Italy; but at any rate we have reason to conclude, that they obtained their first legal establishment by the well-known medical edict of the emperor Frederic II., issued for the kingdom of Naples, and from which Thomasius deduces the privileges they enjoy at present[1020]. By that edict it was required that the confectionarii should take an oath to keep by them fresh and sufficient drugs, and to make up medicines exactly according to the prescriptions of the physicians; and a price was fixed at which the stationarii might vend medicines so prepared, and keep them a year or two for sale in a public shop or store. The physicians at Salerno had the inspection of the stationes, which were not to be established in every place, but in certain towns. The confectionarii appear to have been those who made up the medicines or confectiones. The statio was the house where they were sold, or, according to the present mode of expression, the apothecary’s shop; and the stationarii seem to have been the proprietors, or those who had the care of selling the medicines. The word apotheca seldom occurs in that edict; when it does, it signifies the warehouse or repository where the drugs were preserved. I however find no proof in it that the physicians at that time sent their prescriptions to the stationes to be made up. It appears rather that the confectionarii prepared medicines from a general set of prescriptions legally authorised, and that the physicians selected from these medicines, kept ready for use, such as they thought most proper to be administered to their patients. A physician who had passed an examination, and obtained a licence to practise, was obliged to swear that he would observe formam curiæ hactenus observatam; and if he found quod aliquis confectionarius minus bene conficiat, he was obliged to give information to the curia. The confectionarii swore that they would make up confectiones, secundum prædictam formam. It was necessary that electuaries, syrups, and other medicines, should be accompanied with a certificate from a physician to show that they were properly prepared. I must acknowledge that the edict alludes here only to some medicines commonly employed; and I am surprised that the recipes are not mentioned, if such were then in use. I have never had the good fortune to meet with the word Receptum used to signify a prescription in any works of the above century. The practice of physicians writing out, almost at every visit, the method of preparing the medicines which they order, may perhaps have been introduced at a later period. The book of receipts most in use, by which the medicines of that time were made up, was the Antidotarium, which the physicians of Salerno caused to be collected and translated into Latin from the works of the Arabian physician Mesues, and from those of Avicenna, Galen, Actuarius, Nicolaus Myrepsius, and Nicolaus Præpositus, by the celebrated professor in that city, Nicolaus di Reggio, a native of Calabria.

If it be true that the separation of pharmacy from medicine first took place in Africa, it is highly probable that the well-known Constantinus Afer may have contributed to introduce it also into Italy. This man, who was a native of Carthage, having learned the medical art from the Arabians, made it known in that country, particularly after the year 1086, when he was a Benedictine monk in a monastery situated on Mount Cassino; and the service which he rendered to the celebrated school of physic in the neighbouring city of Salerno, is well known. After his time, the monks in many of the monasteries applied to the preparing of medicines, which they sold to the wealthy, but distributed gratis to the poor, and by these means were much benefited in various respects.

It is well known that almost all political institutions on this side the Alps, and particularly every thing that concerned education, universities, and schools, were copied from Italian models. These were the only patterns then to be found; and the monks, despatched from the papal court, who were employed in such undertakings, clearly saw that they could lay no better foundation for the Pontiff’s power and their own aggrandizement, than by inducing as many states as possible to follow the examples set them in Italy. Medical establishments were formed, therefore, everywhere at first according to the plan of that at Salerno. Particular places for vending medicines were more necessary, however, in other countries than in Italy. The physicians of that period used no other drugs than those recommended by the ancients; and as these were to be procured only in the Levant, Greece, Arabia, and India, it was necessary to send thither for them. Besides, according to the astrological notions which then prevailed, herbs, to be confided in, could not be gathered but when the sun and planets were in certain constellations, and certificates of their being so were requisite to give them reputation. All this was impossible to be done without a distinct employment, for physicians were otherwise engaged. It was found convenient therefore to suffer some of the principal dealers in drugs gradually to acquire monopolies. The preparation of drugs was becoming always more difficult and expensive. After the invention of distillation, sublimation, and other chemical processes, laboratories, furnaces, and costly apparatus were to be constructed, and it was proper that men who had regularly studied chemistry should alone follow pharmacy; and that they should be indemnified for their expenses by an exclusive trade. These monopolists also could be kept under closer inspection, by which the danger of their selling improper drugs or poison was lessened or entirely removed. It would appear that no suspicions were at first entertained, that apothecaries could amass riches by their employment, so soon and so easily as they do at present; for they were allowed many other advantages, and particularly that of dealing in sweetmeats and confectionary, which were then the greatest delicacies. In many places they were obliged on certain festivals to give presents of such dainties to the magistrates, by way of acknowledgment, and hence probably has arisen the custom of sending new-years gifts of marchepanes and other things of the like kind.

In many places, and particularly in opulent cities, the first apothecaries’ shops were established at the public expense, and belonged to the magistrates. A particular garden also was often appropriated to the apothecary, in order that he might rear in it the necessary plants, and which therefore was called the apothecary’s garden[1021]. Apothecaries’ shops for the use of courts were frequently established and directed by the consorts of princes; and it is a circumstance well-known, that many of the fair sex, when they have lost the power of wounding, devote themselves much to the healing and curing art, and to the preparation and dispensing of medicines. [Such indeed is the case at present in France, medicines being both prepared and dispensed by the Sisters of Charity, who attend the sick at the public hospitals, much to the annoyance of the chemists and druggists, who have frequently petitioned the government to interfere to protect their interests.] Dr. Mohsen says that the first apothecaries in Germany came from Italy. This may be probable, but I know no proof of it. I shall now proceed to give some account of the oldest mention made of apothecaries, which will serve to confirm what I have said above.

Of English apothecaries I know nothing more than what has been stated by Anderson[1022], who says that king Edward III., in the year 1345, gave a pension of sixpence a day to Coursus de Gangeland, an apothecary of London, for taking care of and attending his majesty during his illness in Scotland; and this is the first mention of an apothecary in the Fœdera.

Of apothecaries in France no mention occurs before the year 1484; when they received their statutes in the month of August from Charles VIII.[1023] They received others in 1514 under Louis XII.; in 1516 and 1520 under Francis I.; in 1571 under Charles IX.; in 1583 under Henry III.; and in 1594 under Henry IV. These regulations were renewed and confirmed by Louis XIII., in the years 1611, 1624, and 1638.

For the most copious information respecting German apothecaries, we are indebted to Sattler. In the beginning of the fifteenth century an apothecary’s shop was established at Stuttgard by a person named Glatz, which, as the only one in the country, was first sanctioned by the count of Wirtemberg in 1458. In the patent given on that occasion it was said that Glatz’s ancestors had for many years kept an apothecary’s shop at Stuttgard, and had furnished it as a proper apothecary ought. In the year 1457 count Ulric gave to John Kettner, whom the year before he had appointed to be his domestic physician, leave also to establish an apothecary’s shop at Stuttgard, and promised to allow no other in his dominions. The apothecary received yearly from the count a certain quantity of wine, barley and rye; but, on the other hand, he engaged to supply the court with as much confectionary as might be necessary, at the rate of twelve schillings per pound[1024]. Both these shops seem afterwards to have been abandoned, and the count and the apothecary to have entertained the same opinion, that each could renounce his contract when he pleased. In the year 1468, one Albrecht Mulsteiner, or Altumsteiner, from Nuremberg, was appointed apothecary, with a promise that no other private or public shop should be tolerated except that at Wirtemberg. The patent is almost like that given to Kettner; but it deserves to be remarked that it contains, in an additional clause, a catalogue of all the different articles, with their prices. An apothecary’s shop is mentioned at Tubingen, under count Everhard, as an hereditary fief, the possessor of which bound himself to serve as physician and apothecary to the army in time of war. In the year 1500 duke Ulric of Wirtemberg allowed one Syriax Horn to establish an apothecary’s shop at Stuttgard, and appointed him his apothecary for six years. He was obliged to swear that he would supply government and all public officers, as well as the duke’s subjects, with medicines; and the body physician was enjoined to visit the shop once every year, in order to examine whether Horn conducted himself according to the regulations laid down for him, and sold his medicines at the fixed prices. In 1559 four apothecaries were appointed in the duchy, viz. at Stuttgard, Goppingen, Kalw and Bintigheim, which are still called the land-apothecaries. At the same period there was an apothecary’s shop in the ducal palace at Stuttgard, which the consort of duke Christopher caused to be furnished at her own expense; and from which the poor received gratis whatever medicines they stood in need of.

That there were apothecaries’ shops at Augsburg so early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, according to the conjecture of Von Stetten, has been mentioned already. By the records of that city it appears that a public shop was kept there by a female apothecary in the year 1445; and at that period a salary was paid by the city to the person who followed that occupation. In 1507 an order was passed that the apothecaries’ shops should be from time to time inspected; and in 1512 a price was set upon their medicines, and all others were forbidden to deal in them.

The antiquity of the first apothecary’s shop at Hamburg, which belonged to the council, cannot be determined; but it is with certainty known that one existed there before the sixteenth century. It was situated in the middle of the city, near the council-house and the exchange; and had a garden belonging to it, in the new town. Before the year 1618 there was at Hamburg also a private apothecary’s shop. In 1529 a city physician was appointed, and quacks and mountebanks were then banished. The annual visitation by the city physician was established in 1557. The oldest regulation respecting apothecaries is of the year 1586.

Apothecaries’ shops, legally established, existed without doubt at Frankfort on the Maine before the year 1472; for at that period the magistrates of Constance requested to know what regulations were made there respecting the prices of medicines. In 1489 the city physician was instructed to inspect them carefully, and to see that the proper prices were affixed to the different articles. In 1500 all the apothecaries were obliged to take an oath that they would observe the regulations prescribed for them; and in 1603 a decree was passed that no more apothecaries’ shops should be allowed for twelve years than the four then existing; and yet we are told that the fourth was first built in 1629[1025].

In the police regulations drawn up at Basle in the year 1440, by which it was ordered that a public physician should be established in every German imperial city, with the allowance of an ecclesiastical benefice or canonry, in order that he might exercise his art gratis, it is said, “What costly things people may wish to have from the apothecary’s shop they must pay for[1026].” Dr. Mohsen hence concludes that common roots and herbs were not then sold in the apothecaries’ shops, but expensive compounds brought from other countries.

The first apothecary’s shop at Berlin, of which any certain and authentic account can be found in the king’s feudal records, was established in 1488. At that period the magistrates gave one Hans Zehender a right to the hereditary possession of a shop, and promised to allow him yearly, to enable him to support it, a certain quantity of rye, with a free house, and engaged also to exempt him from all contributions, watching and other public burthens, and to permit no other apothecary to reside in the city. This agreement was confirmed in 1491 by the elector John; and in 1499 the elector Joachim I., on his coming to the government, gave the apothecary a new patent, in which his body physician was charged to take care that the shop should be furnished with proper drugs; that the medicines for the elector and his court should be made up according to the prescriptions; and that they should not be charged too high, contrary to the regulated prices[1027]. In the year 1573 there was an apothecary’s shop in the palace for the use of the court; but Mr. Nicolai[1028] conjectures that it was only a portable one, and consisted of some chests filled with medicines. The present one was founded in 1598 by Catharine, consort of the elector Joachim Frederick; but the establishment, as it now stands, began to be formed in the year 1605, when Crispin Haubenschmid, the first apothecary to the court, was brought from Halle to Berlin. Catharine, widow of the margrave John of Custrin, caused an apothecary’s shop for the use of the court to be established at Krossen, under the inspection of her physician Wigands, because there was then no shop of that kind in the place; and at her death in 1574 she bequeathed it to the magistrates.

In Halle there was no apothecary’s shop till the year 1493. Before that period medicines were sold only by grocers and barbers. In the above year however the council, with the approbation of the archbishop, permitted one Simon Puster to establish an apothecary’s shop, in order, as stated in the patent, that the citizens might be supplied with confections, cooling liquors, and such like common things, at a cheap rate, and that, in cases of sickness, they might be able to procure readily fresh and well-prepared medicines. Puster was exempted by it from all taxes and contributions for ten years, but with this proviso, that during that period he should furnish yearly at the council-house for two collations in the time of the festivals, eight pounds of good sugar confections, fit and proper to be used at such entertainments. It stated, on the other hand, that in future no kind of preserves made with sugar, or what was called confectionary, or theriac, should be kept for sale or sold either in the market or in booths, shops or stalls, except at the annual fair. This apothecary’s shop was the only one in Halle till the year 1535, when the archbishop gave his physician, J. N. von Wyhe, liberty to establish a new one; but with an assurance, that to eternity, no more apothecaries’ shops should be permitted in Halle; and this declaration was confirmed by the chapter. Notwithstanding the archbishop’s promise, strengthened by that of his clergy, one Wolf Holzwirth, a skilful apothecary, who returned from Italy, found means to procure permission in 1555 to establish a third apothecary’s shop[1029].

In the year 1409, when the university of Prague was transferred to Leipsic, and every thing at the latter was put on the same footing as at the former, an apothecary’s shop was also established, which, as that at Prague had been, was known by the sign of the Golden Lion.

In the year 1560 there was no apothecary’s shop at Eisenach, and even in the time of duke John Ernest, who died in 1638, there was none for the court; but the place of apothecary was supplied by one of the yeomen of the jewellery.

In the year 1598, count John von Oldenburg caused an apothecary’s shop to be established at Oldenburg for the common good of the country[1030].

In Hanover the first apothecary’s shop was established by the council in 1565, near the council-house[1031]. The consort of duke Philip II. of Grubenhagen, a princess of Brunswick, who was married in 1560, supported at her court an apothecary’s shop and a still-house, for the benefit of her servants and the poor[1032]. Duke Julius, who came to the government of Brunswick in 1568, caused apothecaries’ shops to be established in his territories; and his consort, a daughter of the elector of Brandenburg, kept, for the use of the poor, an expensive apothecary’s shop in her palace; and the citizens of the new Heinrichstadt, near Wolfenbuttel, were allowed when afflicted by any epidemic disease, the dysentery, quinsy, scurvy, or stone, to be supplied with medicines from it free of all expense[1033].

The apothecary’s shop at the court of Dresden was founded by the electress Ann, a Danish princess, in the year 1581. In 1609 it was renewed by Hedwig, widow of the elector Christian I.; and in 1718 it received considerable improvement.

Gustavus Erickson, king of Sweden, was the first person in that country who attempted to establish an apothecary’s shop. On the 20th of March, 1547, he requested Dr. John Audelius of Lubeck, to send him an experienced physician and a good apothecary. On the 5th of May, 1550, his body-physician, Henry von Diest, received orders to bring a skilful apothecary into the kingdom. When the king died in 1560, he had no other physicians with him than his barber master Jacob, an apothecary master Lucas, and his confessor Magister Johannes, who, according to the popish mode, practised physic, and prescribed for his majesty. Master Lucas, as appears, was the first apothecary at Stockholm. On the 21st of March, 1575, one Anthony Busenius was appointed by king John apothecary to the court[1034]; and in 1623, Philip Magnus Schmidt, a native of Langensalz in Thuringen, was chosen to fill that office. In the year 1675 there were five apothecaries’ shops in Stockholm; since 1694 the number has been nine. The first apothecary’s shop at Upsal was established in 1648 by Simon Wolimhaus, who came from Konigsee in Thuringen, and from whom the present family of count Gyllenborg are descended. The first apothecary’s shop at Gottenburg was established about the same time. Towards the end of the sixteenth century physicians and apothecaries were invited into Russia by the czar Boris Godunow[1035].

I shall here take occasion to remark the following circumstance: at the Byzantine court the keeper of the wardrobe, as the yeoman of the jewellery at Eisenach in the sixteenth century, had the care of the portable apothecary’s shop when the emperor took the field. It was called pandectæ, and contained theriac and antidotes, with all kinds of oils, plasters, salves, and herbs proper for curing men and cattle[1036].

[In England, in 1543, an act was passed for the toleration and protection of the numerous irregular practitioners, who were neither surgeons nor physicians. It was entitled “An Act that persons being no common surgeons may minister outward medicines;” the persons thus tolerated comprehending those who kept shops for the sale of drugs, to whom the name of apothecaries was then exclusively applied. On the 9th of April, 1606, king James I. incorporated the apothecaries of London and united them with the grocers; they remained so until 1617, when they received a new charter, forming them into a separate company under the designation of the master, wardens, and society of the art and mysteries of apothecaries of the city of London. It appears that the apothecaries of London did not begin generally to prescribe as well as to dispense medicines until a few years before the close of the seventeenth century.]

I must add a few observations also respecting the earliest Dispensatorium. It is almost generally admitted that the first was drawn up by Valerius Cordus, or at least that his was the first sanctioned by the approbation of public magistrates. Haller has remarked one older; but it is now known only from the title mentioned by Maittaire[1037]. Cordus however appears to have first used the word dispensatorium for a collection of receipts, containing directions how to prepare the medicines most in use. This book it is well known has been often printed with the additions of other physicians; but, in my opinion, Conring[1038] is in a mistake when he says that it was improved and enlarged by Matthiolus. I have in no edition found any additions of Matthiolus; and the error seems to have arisen from the christian name of Matthias Lobelius, which stands in the title of some editions, because his annotations are added to them. It is very singular that Kestner[1039] also has fallen into this mistake, who, however, says that the name of Matthiolus is only in the title, for in the book itself he found no appearance of his having had any concern with it.

FOOTNOTES

[1010] Dr. Mohsen has already published a considerable part of what belongs to this subject in his Geschichte der Wissenschaften in der Mark Brandenburg, besonders der Arzneywissenschaft. Berlin, 1781, 4to, p. 372. Some information also respecting the history of apothecaries may be found in Thomassii Dissert. de Jure circa Pharmacopolia Civitatum, in his Dissertationes Academicæ, Halle, 1774, 4 vols. quarto.

[1011] Digest. lib. xlviii. tit. 8, 3, 3.

[1012] De Mulomedic. iii. 2, 21, p. 1107.

[1013] Plin. lib. xxxiv. cap. 11.

[1014] Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. x. p. 121. Aulus Gellius, lib. i. cap. 15.

[1015] Lib. xix. cap. 6.

[1016] Cod. Theodos. iii. tit. 16.

[1017] Proofs of this may be found in Glossarium Manuale, vol. i. p. 298. From the word apotheca the Italians have made boteca, and the French boutique.

[1018] In the Nurnberger Bürgerbuch mention is made of Mr. Conrade Apotheker, 1403; Mr. Hans Apotheker, 1427; and Mr. Jacob Apotheker, 1433. See Von Murr’s Jornal der Kunstgeschichte, vi. p. 79. Henricus Apothecarius occurs as a witness at Gorlitz, in a charter of the year 1439; and one John Urban Apotheker excited an insurrection against the magistrates of Lauban in 1439. See Buddæi Singularia Lusatica, vol. ii. p. 424, 500. One cannot with any certainty determine whether these people were properly apothecaries, which must be borne in mind in reading the following passage of Von Stetten in his Kunstgeschichte der Stadt Augsburg, p. 242: “In very old times there was a family here who had the name of Apotheker, and it is very probable that some of this family had kept a public apothecary’s shop. Luitfried Apotheker, or in der Apothek, lived in the year 1285, and Hans Apotheker was, in 1317, city chamberlain.”

[1019] De Hermetica Medicina libri duo. Helmst. 1669, p. 293.

[1020] This edict may be found in Lindenbrogii Codex Legum Antiquarum, p. 809. The law properly here alluded to, de probabili experientia medicorum, is by most authors ascribed to the emperor Frederic I., but by Conring to his grandson Frederic II. See Conring De Antiquitatibus Academicis. Gottingæ, 1739, 4to, p. 60.

[1021] These gardens in most cities have been revoked, but they still retain their ancient names, though applied to other purposes. In this manner the œconomical garden at Göttingen is called by the common people the apothecary’s garden.

[1022] Hist. of Commerce, i. 319.

[1023] Histoire de Paris, par Sauval, ii. p. 474.--Histoire de Paris, par Felibien, ii. p. 927.--Traité de la Police, par De la Mare, i. p. 618.

[1024] Sattlers Geschichte Würtenberg, v. p. 159. Addenda, p. 329.

[1025] Lersner’s Frankfurter Chronik, i. p. 26, 493; ii. pp. 57, 58.

[1026] Goldasti Constitutiones Imperiales. Francof. 1607, fol. p. 192.

[1027] Mohsens Geschichte, p. 379.

[1028] Beschreibung von Berlin, i. p. 39 and 87.

[1029] Von Dreyhaupts Beschreibung des Saal-Creyses, ii. 561.

[1030] Hamelmanns Oldenburgische Chronik, 1599, fol. p. 491.

[1031] Grupens Origines Hannoverenses. Gott. 1740, 4to, p. 341.

[1032] “By her apothecary’s shop and still-house one may discover what real compassion the Christian-like electress showed towards the poor who were sick or infirm; for, by having medicines prepared, and by causing all kinds of waters to be distilled, she did not mean to assist only her own people and those belonging to her court, but the poor in general, whether natives or foreigners, and not for the sake of advantage or gain, but gratis and for the love of God.”--Letzners Dasselsche und Eimbecksche Chronica.--Erfurt, 1596, fol. p. 104.

[1033] This account is taken from the learned information collected by Professor Spittler, in his Geschichte Hannover. Gött. 1786, 8vo, p. 275. That the council of Göttingen began very early to pay great attention to medical institutions, is proved by the following passage from the Göttingischen Chronike of Franciscus Lubecus:--“Anno 1380, the city procured a surgeon from Eschwege, who with his servant was to be exempted from contributions and watching; and to receive clothes yearly from the council.”

[1034] Von Dalins Geschichte Schweden, übersetzt von Dahnert. 4 vols. 4to, p. 318 and 394.

[1035] Backmeister, Essai sur la Biblioth. à St. Pétersb. 1776, 8vo, p. 37.

[1036] Constantinus Porphyrogen. de Ceremoniis Aulæ Byzantinæ. Lipsiæ, 1751, fol. i. p. 270.

[1037] Bibliotheca Botan. i. p. 244. Ricettario di dottori dell’ arte e di medicina del collegio Florentino, all’ instantia delli Signori Consoli della università delli speciali. Firenz. 1498, fol. Maittaire. Primum, quantum repperi, dispensarium.

[1038] Introductio in Artem Medicam. Helmstadii, 1687, 4to, p. 375.

[1039] C. G. Kestneri Bibliotheca Medica, Jenæ, 1746, 8vo, p. 638.