The Temple of Music

[click images for larger versions]


You know how sometimes when you first come across a new topic or thing and you see it from one particular angle that makes you like it so you retain a sympathetic viewpoint as you rummage around for more information?

That's how I felt about the enigmatic and controversial Robert Fludd (1574-1637) as I made my way through his 'De Naturae Simia' book from the enormous 'Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet et Minores Metaphysica, Physica Atque Technica Historia' series, published by Theodore de Bry in batches between 1617 and 1626, online at the J Willard Marriot Library at the University of Utah.

Paging through the website's edited but extensive selection of Fludd's work, it was easy to develop admiration and respect for this polymath who was attempting to document the logical world. He sets down theories and descriptions in latin (all extensively illustrated) covering mathematics, geometry, music, artistic and architectural perspective, horology, military fortifications, astronomy, engineering machines and no doubt other subjects I'm forgetting. Some of the ideas are of course fanciful or perplexing at best, but overall there's this sense that Fludd had an orderly and enquiring scientific mind.

History doesn't have such a singularly supportive view of our man Fludd. After completing his medical studies, he toured the continent for 6 years during which time Fludd became interested in alchemy and Rosicrucianism. From then on his views and extensive publications present a mystical, hermetic philosophy as Fludd attempted to incorporate the ideas of Paracelcus into an essentially staunch religious framework. His medical practice involved a fair sampling of astrology and faith healing and Fludd's forceful and magnetic personality was said to help cure his patients.

Fludd was accused of being a magician and a heretic and even the astronomer Johannes Kepler was moved to publish criticisms of the hermetic approach to knowledge. Much of the prolific output of Fludd was devoted to defending the cosmic harmony proposed by alchemists and the Rosicrucian movement. While on the one hand he may come across as a champion of the esoteric sciences, Fludd was also the first to support Harvey's theory about the circulation of blood, he believed in a heliocentric universe, was thought by some to have invented the barometer, obtained a patent from the Privy Council for making steel and he still had time to be a Censor for the Royal College of Physicians.

That initial positive reaction I felt leafing through 'De Naturae Simia' was due in no small part to the sections devoted to music. I can't read latin almost at all and I have no academic knowledge in relation to music or music history, but there is a distinctly studious feeling attached to the musical maps and musical notation illustrations (many done by Matthäus Merian), beyond the allegorical fancy of the Temple(s) of Music. Perhaps it's naive on my part but I couldn't help thinking that this was an intellect worth exploring.

Virtually all the above images were uploaded at full size. A few have been touched up - which ones? One or two of the illustrations are borderline non-musical and in fact, that last image, with the 4 illustrations, are mathematical calculation maps. I've got a whole load more images for a second post in a day or 2 and it was a toss up how to divide them between entries. If you want to find any of the above images in the cumbersome Utah University website, the page numbers are all listed in the image alt-tags (right click the image & choose 'properties').

• The complete 'Utriusque Cosmi Maioris Scilicet..' (grey scale illustrations) is actually available as multiple zip files or as an enormous pdf for download.
• Biographies: NNDB; Galileo Project; Wikipedia; Fludd chronology.
• At Levity, about halfway down the page, is an interesting exchange about the allegorical nature of our simian friend on the titlepage above.
• 'Robert Fludd: A Picture in Need of Expansion' © Ron Heisler.
• Doctor Robert Flood by Sharon MW, also at Levity.
• 'Robert Flood and the End of the Renaissance' (W. Huffman 1988) - book review by John Henry.
  
• The last alchemist.
• Images at JR Ritman Library, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica.
• First page from a subscription only article on the musical instruments in Fludd's books.
• Pink Floyd ?!
• See also: Part II, Fludd Returns.
  

Death Becomes Her

Une chambrière et une entremetteuse
AND Une régente et une femme de chevalier.

Une femme d'accueil (ou hotesse) et une nourrice
AND Une femme mariée et une coquette

Une vieille fille et une cordelière
AND Une reine et une duchesse

Une bergère et une infirme
AND Une sage-femme et une petite fille

Une bigote et une folle
AND Une revendeuse et une amoureuse

La gueule du Leviathan et la mort sur son cheval
AND Les âmes damnés aux Enfers.

In the 'Danse Macabre' genre that derives from the now lost paintings on the walls of the Church of the Holy Innocents in Paris [1424], the famous Parisian printer Guyhot Marchant is said to have preserved the original illustrations in his 1485 publication, 'Danse Macabre'.¹

Following from the success of the original work, a second Marchant book was released in 1491: 'Danse Macabre des Femmes' from which the first 6 images above are taken (all 36 woodcuts are available at BNF - scanned from a microfilm of 'Cy est la Danse Macabre des Femmes Toute Hystoriée et Augmentée', 1491 in 2 volumes)

The series follows the traditional pattern of a 2-part didactic poem whereby death calls women from all walks of life to join the inevitable 'Dance of Death', and the women respond. An illuminated manuscript was also made of the series and together they contribute some further understanding about the lives of medieval women - as investigated in the 1994 'The Danse Macabre of Women: Ms. fr. 995 of the Bibliotheque Nationale' Ed. Ann Tukey Harrison, Kent State University Press.

Both the original and female versions of Marchant's 'Danse Macabre' books came to be combined in a single publication and the Médiathèque de l’Agglomération Troyenne have a wonderful web presentation of a late 17th century ammalgamated text (click the image for a flash 'turn the pages' view or click bottom left for a zoomable html version).

The second set of images above come from the Cornell University Rare books Luna Insight browser collection. The only information available states: 'Dis des estats (Les dis des eites) 1513' in the 'Heures a lusaige de Paris' collection. [You can see those words - actually, I think Cornell have transcribed them wrong - in the 3rd last illustration, in red. I read it as something like: 'A talk with the citizens and death's response'.] I feel quite confident they belong to the 'Danse Macabre' genre but alas, I couldn't uncover any further information. (there are no more of these images at Cornell)

• See: 'Guyot Marchant’s Danse Macabre. The Relationship Between Image and Text' by David A. Fein, 2000 [pdf]. {html}
  
• ' 'Oh Death!': Death, Dying, and the Culture of the Macabre in the Late Middle Ages' Prepared by Emily Rebekah Huber as part of the Camelot Project at the University of Rochester, New York state.
• ¹I've now found the earliest book version of the 'Danse Macabre' online, from the 1460s, which I'll post somewhere along the line.

Galvanizing Aldini

Among the inspirations for Mary Shelley's gothic classic 'Frankenstein' from 1818 were the (in)famous experiments carried out in public by the physicist Giovanni Aldini (1762-1834) at the Royal College of Surgeons in 1803.

Aldini was the nephew of the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani who experimented with frog legs in the late 18th century and noted that the muscles contracted with the passage of an electrical current (he thought he had discovered a unique 'animal electricity'). Provoking muscle contraction by applying electricity came to be known as galvansim [and galvanize or galvanise came to have a wider meaning: stimulate into activity]. Aldini assisted with his uncle's work and later promoted the principle in his own experiments and publications.

"In January 1803, the body of the murderer George Forster was pulled from the gallows of Newgate Prison in London and taken to the Royal College of Surgeons. There, before an audience of doctors and curiosity-seekers, Giovanni Aldini, nephew of the late Luigi Galvani, prepared to return the corpse to life.

At least, that is what some of the spectators thought they were witnessing. When Aldini applied conducting rods, connected to a large battery, to Forster's face, "the jaw began to quiver, the adjoining muscles were horribly contorted, and the left eye actually opened". The climax of the performance came as Aldini probed Forster's rectum, causing his clenched fist to punch the air, as if in fury, his legs to kick and his back to arch violently." [continues at The Guardian]

These human and animal experiments with electricity came to be described by Aldini in his (now very rare) 1804 book 'Essai Théorique et Expérimental sur le Galvanisme' from which the above plates were taken. The work is also notable for first describing how steel needles could be magnetized with a current, as well as exploring the velocity of electricity through water, electrical fish and the conductivity of flames.

The electrical work of Aldini was not restricted to attempts at reanimating human and animal corpses. Prior to his famous London showmanship, Aldini had some success treating hospital patients suffering from 'melancholia' by giving them a strong electric shock -- this was the first recording of electroconvulsive therapy, which for the most part has been used (with arguable but apparent success) up to modern times in certain cases of depression.

• All the above images come from the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at Cornell University (first link) which employs a Luna Insight browser. Strangely, the plates are not credited on the site to Giovanni Aldini at all, but can be found by searcing on 'Lavoisier' (name of collection in which the book resides). I saw in passing somewhere that there are 10 plates in the book in total but all of the Cornell images have been posted above.
• Corrosion Doctors: Giovanni Aldini; Luigi Galvani; Galvanism; Galvanic Reanimation.
• Dept. of History, University of California Irvine - Galvanic Experiments: Stories from The Times of London.
  
• Bibliography of Aldini's published works (search on 'Aldini').
• The Birth of Frankenstein at the National Library of Medicine.
• The Reanimators at Fortean Times.
• Galvanic Reanimation of the Dead at Lateral Science.
• [Extract from] 'A History of Nerve Functinons: from Animal Spirits to Moleular Mechanisms' by Sidney Ochs 2004.
• 'Giovanni Aldini (1803) and the Electrical Cure for "Melancholic Madness" ' by Sherry Ann Beaudreau and Stanley Finger [abstract from a lecture - search on 'Aldini'].
• In Spanish: A good weblog post at Psiquiatría Histórica on the history of biological treatments in psychiatry (illustrated).

Published in Harpers Weekly in 1836
[source and explanation]