William Poole

Living Texts: Interpreting Milton

The essays in this collection are a testimony to Miltons claim that books doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are. They are proof that Miltons progeny, whether poetry or prose, continue to inspire readers to investigate and interpret, and that even the poet himself is at times the subject of scrutiny. Although these essays examine issues as widely diverse as the reliability of Adams narration to Raphael and the portrayal of chaos in Paradise Lost to the poets role as an object of erotic attention in the nineteenth century, all suggest that Miltons are still living texts.

The first intravenous anaesthetic: how well was it managed and its potential realized?

Our speciality commonly traces its origin to a demonstration of the inhalation of ether by a patient undergoing surgery in Boston in 1846. Less well known is the demonstration of the i.v. injection of opium with alcohol into a dog in Oxford in 1656, leading to anaesthesia followed by full long-term recovery. After gaining i.v. access, a mixture of opium and alcohol was injected, resulting in a brief period of anaesthesia. After a period during which the dog was kept moving to assist recovery, a full recovery was made. Details from this momentous experiment allow us to compare the technique used with modern management. It is important to consider why there was a failure to translate the results into clinical practice and nearly 200 yr of potentially pain-free surgery. Possible factors include lack of equipment for i.v. access, lack of understanding of dose-response effects, and a climate of scientific discovery rather than clinical application. Given the current interest in total i.v. anaesthesia, it seems appropriate to identify its origins well before those of inhalation anaesthesia.

Francis Lodwick's Creation: Theology and Natural Philosophy in the Early Royal Society

This paper examines the cosmological theories of Francis Lodwick (1619-94), the Fellow of the Royal Society, language theorist and close associate of Robert Hooke, concentrating on some unnoticed manuscripts he wrote on this issue. It is demonstrated that Lodwicks account of creation acts as a commentary on the opening chapters of Genesis, influenced in equal measures by the new corpuscular philosophy, and by the heretical, messianic ideas of the Frenchman Isaac La Peyrere, whose Prae-Adamitae (1655) so shocked European scholars. Such a conclusion emphasizes that in the case of Lodwick no clear distinction between biblical criticism and natural philosophy can be maintained, and that the theological ideas he brought to his vortical model of creation were strongly heretical. Such a situation contradicts the proposition insisted upon by early apologists for the Royal Society that the institutionalizing of scientific work would promote orthodox Christianity.

John Milton and the Beard-Hater: encounters with Julian the Apostate

ABSTRACT This is a study of John Milton and Julian the Apostate, last of the pagan emperors. It follows two trajectories. The first takes as its subject Julian’s “School Edict” of 362 AD, which barred Christians from traditional classical education; while the second concerns a literary text by Julian himself, the Misopogon or “Beard-Hater,” in which he ironically attacked his own aversion to Antiochene Christianity, including the performance of plays. These discussions offer an opportunity to re-examine Milton’s comments on early Christian views of drama, as well as his own drafts for sacred dramas. All these discussions turn on the question of how the Christian is to approach pagan literature, one of the oldest intellectual debates within Christianity. I argue that Milton’s attitude to Greek literature as an entire process was shaped by his attitude to this specific debate, and that this can be seen afresh by viewing it through the eyes of its most powerful critic in antiquity, Julian the Apostate. I also furnish an account of the early-modern editorial tradition of Julian.

Down and Out in Leiden and London: The Later Careers of Venceslaus Clemens (1589–1637), and Jan Sictor (1593–1652), Bohemian Exiles and Failing Poets

This paper addresses the later careers of two almost entirely forgotten Bohemian Neo-Latin poets, Venceslaus Clemens (1589-1637), and Jan Sictor (1593-1652). These men were among the many Protestant academics displaced by the Thirty Years War, but unlike some of their better-known contemporaries, Clemens and Sictor were abject failures. Nevertheless, their failure illustrates the miserable lot of the displaced continental academic in the period, unable to adapt fully to new and challenging circumstances. This aspect of the literary and intellectual impact of the Thirty Years War has been understandably underplayed, but stories of failure are nevertheless instructive and indeed essential for a balanced picture of the intellectual impact of war. This study employs archival and bibliographical evidence to reconstruct the biographies and fortunes of these two men as they tried their luck, with very limited success, in the Low Countries and England in the 1630s.

What Happened to Sir Thomas Browne

Taylor and Francis RIHR_A_525918.sgm 10.1080/17496977.2010.525918 Inte lectual History Review 749-6977 (pri t)/1749-6985 (online) Essay Review 2 10rnational So ety for Intellectual History 40 0 002010 Wil iamPoo e wil ia .p @new.ox.ac.uk Kevin Killeen, Biblical Scholarship, Science and Politics in Early Modern England: Thomas Browne and the Thorny Place of Knowledge (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). Kathryn Murphy and Richard Todd (eds), ‘A Man Very Well Studyed’: New Contexts for Thomas Browne (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Reid Barbour and Claire Preston (eds), Sir Thomas Browne: The World Reflected (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Theodoricus Gravius (fl. 1600–1661): Some Biographical Notes on a German Chymist and Scribe Working in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract This article establishes the career of Theodoricus Gravius (fl. 1600–1661), a German refugee who worked in Great Linford as a laboratory assistant and scribe to the cleric and practitioner of astrological medicine, Richard Napier (1559–1634). Gravius was the first transmitter to England of the texts of the mystic Jacob Böhme, and although he settled in England, he undertook subsequent foreign visits to attempt the recovery of his property and to learn more about chymical matters. He also visited the Oxonian George Hakewill (1578–1649), and is responsible for scribing one of the manuscripts of the revisions to Hakewills celebrated Apologie or Declaration Concerning the Power and Providence of God (1635).

A royalist mathematical practitioner in interregnum Oxford: the exploits of Richard Rawlinson (1616–1668)

ABSTRACT This article explores the biography and career of the forgotten Oxford mathematician and astronomer Richard Rawlinson, 1616-1668. It also identifies both his sole surviving work in an overlooked engraved booklet, and his mathematical manuscripts, still in the library of Queen’s College today.

Seventeenth-Century ‘double writing’ schemes, and a 1676 letter in the phonetic script and real character of John Wilkins

Royal Society Classified Papers XVI contains a letter written in not one but two seemingly mysterious scripts. As a result, this letter has remained until now effectively illegible, and has been miscatalogued. These scripts are rare examples of the written forms devised by John Wilkins to accompany his proposals for an artificial language, published under the auspices of the Royal Society in 1668. This article therefore first correctly identifies and decodes this letter, which is shown to be from the Somersetshire clergyman Andrew Paschall to Robert Hooke in London in 1676, and then surveys other surviving texts written in Wilkinss scripts or language. Finally the article addresses the contents of the letter, namely its authors attempt to build a workable double writing device, in effect an early ‘pantograph’. Designs for such instruments had been much touted in the 1650s, and the complex history of such proposals is unravelled properly for the first time.

John Wilkins (1614-1672): New Essays

A cutting-edge reappraisal of Wilkins and his achievement, featuring ten studies covering all aspects of Wilkins’s career as an influential natural philosopher, theologian, and statesman.I argue during that from the mid-seventeenth to the early eighteenth century, chymistry became more of an applied, practical aspect of natural philosophy at Oxford, its motivations economic, largely due to its tangential status in the university.