Gaslight digest of discussion for 97-apr-30
----------------------------THE HEADERS---------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 09:21:14 -0700 (MST)
From: "STEPHEN DAVIES, MT. ROYAL COLLEGE"
Subject: Manitoba flooding = loss of novels [11404]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 12:52:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Reeve's Three Alchemists [11405]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 13:55:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Correction and query [11406]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 14:04:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Gypsy lore query [11407]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 13:24:37 -0500
From: ayc(at)ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (athan chilton)
Subject: Re: Gypsy lore query [11407] [11408]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:26:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Re: Gypsy lore query [11407] [11408] [11409]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 14:47:53 -0600 (CST)
From: Chris Carlisle
Subject: Re: Gypsy lore query [11407] [11408] [11409] [11410]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:20:16 -0400
From: Seth Foster
Subject: Re: Manitoba flooding = loss of novels [11404] [11411]
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 19:51:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Debah(at)aol.com
Subject: Re: Reeve's modern alchemy [11403] [11412]
-----------------------------THE POSTS-----------------------------
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 09:21:14 -0700 (MST)
From: "STEPHEN DAVIES, MT. ROYAL COLLEGE"
Subject: Manitoba flooding = loss of novels [11404]
A reporter was interviewed on the radio about his experiences
covering the Manitoba flooding (the Red River become the Red
Sea), and he related a story about an unnamed novelist he had
spoken with.
The novelist was scooping up his loose manuscripts and tossing
them into his van because he had four hours to evacuate his
home.
Altho the flooding is causing widespread tragedy, none worse
than loss of life, I thought you might be interested in
hearing what the novelist was having to sacrifice.
He took the reporter upstairs and showed him North America's
largest private collection of turn of the century first
edition novels: 1300 titles. That was his claim anyway.
I can only hope these links with the past will escape serious
damage. I was reading Mario R.'s concern on Victorian-L that
original materials from the Victorian era are disappearing
(disintegrating?) all the time. This may be a textbook
example of that.
Stephen D
SDavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 12:52:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Reeve's Three Alchemists [11405]
Reeve mentions three alchemists in "The Invisible Ray": Paracelsus, Simon
Forman, and Jerome Cardan. At least two of these men do indeed
resemble Dr. Prescott in that they mixed elements of occultism with
the practice of medicine. (It is interesting that the triumvirate of scientists
that Reeve presents were physicists, chemists, i.e., practioners of the "hard
sciences," whereas medicine is a far more inexact science; indeed, it
can be more art than science.)
Reeve's alchemists were not, however, without real scientific accomplishment,
which makes me think that perhaps, in the character of Prescott, Reeve was
not engaged in a little scientific speculation of his own, safely disguised in
fictional form. (Alas, I was only a poor English major in college and my
ability to distinguish possibilities from falsehoods in science is hazy
at best.) In any case, the material below, taken from various websites,
gives some information on Reeve's collection of alchemists, all of whom
seemed to have lived in the 16th century.
There is a great deal of material available on Paracelsus, so I will content
myself with only two brief references to him.
From the A&E Biography site:
>>Paracelsus
originally Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von
Hohenheim (1493--1541)
Alchemist and physician, born in Einsiedeln, Switzerland. He travelled
widely in Europe and the Middle East, learning about alchemy, and
acquiring great fame as a medical practitioner (1526). He became town
physician and lecturer at Basel (1527), but his controversial views
caused his exile in 1538. He travelled through Europe until settling at
Salzburg in 1541. He established the use of chemistry in medicine,
gave the most up-to-date description of syphilis, and was the first to
argue that small doses of what makes people ill can also cure them.<<
To this rather innocent-looking bio can be added the following from
the website A Who's Who of Witches: 1100-1800
>>Traveled throughout Europe, practicing medicine, occultism, alchemy,
prognostications. Wrote on sylphs, salamanders, nymphs: incorporating
mystic elements into Germanic folk legends.
Noted for his magic speculum used in divination, for making which he
offered detailed instructions. <<
About Simon Forman, I could only come up with the following from the
same website (i.e., A Who's Who of Witches: 1100-1800)
>>Dr. Forman
Seventeenth century astrologer and magician. Practiced image magic at
court of King James VI of Scotland. <<
The most fascinating of the three, to me at least, was Jerome Cardan. Cardan
was a man of real achievement in the sciences but found himself constantly
embroiled in trouble because of his occult interests. Here is a much more
complete bio. Than offered for Paracelsus and Simon Forman:
>>Girolamo Cardano
Born: 24 Sept 1501 in Pavia, Duchy of Milan (now Italy)
Died: 21 Sept 1576 in (now Italy)
Cardan is famed for his work Ars Magna which was the first Latin treatise
devoted solely to algebra. Girolamo Cardano's name was Cardan in Latin
and in English he is sometimes known as Jerome Cardan. Cardan studied
at Pavia and Padua receiving a doctorate in medicine in 1525. He was
professor of mathematics at Milan, Pavia and Bologna leaving each after
some scandal.
Cardan lectured and wrote on mathematics, medicine, astronomy,
astrology, alchemy, and physics. In fact his fame as a doctor was such
that the Archbishop of St Andrews, on suffering as he thought from
consumption, sent for Cardan. Cardan is reported to have visited
Scotland to treat the Archbishop who was not suffering from consumption
and made a complete recovery.
Cardan is famed for his work Ars Magna which was the first Latin
treatise devoted solely to algebra and is one of the important steps in
the rapid development in mathematics which began around this time
(and still continues today). Ars Magna made known the solution of the
cubic by radicals and the solution of the quartic by radicals. These
were proved by Tartaglia and Ferrari respectively. Ferrari was in fact a
pupil of Cardan's.
In Ars Magna appears the first computation with complex numbers
although Cardan did not properly understand it.
Cardan's Liber de ludo aleae in 1563 was the first study of the theory of
probability. De vita propria liber in 1575 is Cardan's autobiography.
It is one of the first modern psychological autobiographies.
Cardan was eventually forbidden to lecture or publish books. In 1570
he was imprisioned on a charge of having cast the horoscope of Christ.
In 1571 Pope Pius V granted him an annuity for life and he settled in
Rome and became astrologer to the papal court.
Cardan is reported to have correctly predicted the exact date of his own
death. He achieved this by committing suicide. <<
(Note: another source reports that it was not Pius V who sponsored
Cardan but Gregory XIII. "Pius would have nothing to do with him
since he had just been found guilty by the Inquisition.")
To give you an idea of some of Cardan's speculative writings, I offer
the following quotation from Cyrano de Bergerac's _A Voyage to
the Moon_. In it, Cardan appears to have been involved in what
Ufologists call "a close encounter of the third kind":
>>Being come home, I went up into my Closet, where I found a Book
upon the Table, which I had not put there. It was a piece of Cardanus,
and though I had no design to read in it, yet I fell at first sight, as
by force, exactly upon a Passage of that Philosopher, where he tells us,
That Studying one evening by Candle-light, he perceived Two Tall old
Men enter through the door that was shut, who after many questions
that he put to them, made him answer, That they were Inhabitants of
the Moon, and thereupon immediately disappeared.<<
The book in question is entitled _De Subtilitate Rerum_, which was
at the top of the European best-seller list in 1550 and considered one
of Cardan's best. (The determination of Cardan's best work depends
on the particular discipline of the person doing the judging.) Cardan
is sometimes called the Italian Paracelsus. He was involved in
nearly every branch of knowledge available to a sixteenth-century
scholar, including alchemy and necromancy. At one site he was
also referred to as a "physiomancer," a word whose meaning I can't
guess, only that it must be a form of divination.
Quite a collection of individuals Reeve plucked out to include
in his story.
Bob Champ
rchamp(at)europa.umuc.edu
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 13:55:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Correction and query [11406]
In my post on the Three Alchemists, I said that it seemed to me that
Reeve was *not* engaging in scientific speculation. That "not" is
a mistake and should be omitted.
Could anyone tell me what image magic is? Magic with mirrors, perhaps?
Or is this magic that involves making images of someone, as in voodoo?
Bob Champ
rchamp(at)europa.umuc.edu
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 14:04:53 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Gypsy lore query [11407]
I know that, on the decease of a gypsy, everything he/she owned is burned
in a ritual ceremony. But what of the gypsy him or herself? I can't
imagine that gypsies would have been buried in most cemeteries--so
was cremation a gypsy response? Or would cremation, if done, be a
holdover from the gypsy days in India where cremation is a common
practice?
Bob Champ
rchamp(at)europa.umuc.edu
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 13:24:37 -0500
From: ayc(at)ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (athan chilton)
Subject: Re: Gypsy lore query [11407] [11408]
Bob, in Jan Yoors' book, a gypsy who dies is buried--in a local
graveyard--with much hysterical behavior, esp. by the women. Then
everybody goes back to camp, where those nearest to the deceased will fast
for a day or longer, stay up all night singing and lamenting, and drinking
in order to purge themselves of grief. The book notes that the gaje were
startled at the violence of the Rom's behavior...
I have not heard of cremation among them, but do not know what current
practices may be among so-called 'settled' Rom.
Athan
ayc(at)ux1.cso.uiuc.edu
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 15:26:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Robert Champ
Subject: Re: Gypsy lore query [11407] [11408] [11409]
Athan's comment about Gypsy reactions to funerals is given further
substance by the description in one of my books of a gypsy funeral
procession: "Among Hungarian gypsies a funeral procession is on
occasion a musical performance, consisting of the processional
mourners who follow the coffin while playing the violin, clarinet,
flute, cello." This does not indicate cremation, though the hysterical
women and all the musical instruments going at the same time must have
created a wonderful cacophony.
Yet, unless there were public cemeteries in many places on the circuits of
the various Gypsy bands, I can't think what was done with dead bodies.
I don't believe the Rom would have been given permission to bury their
dead in most Christian cemeteries, which were the only cemeteries in
some places.
Perhaps the selection of the circuits was, in some degree, decided by such
considerations.
As the Gypsies would say, Athan, _nais tuki_ ("thanks" in Romany).
Bob Champ
rchamp(at)europa.umuc.edu
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 14:47:53 -0600 (CST)
From: Chris Carlisle
Subject: Re: Gypsy lore query [11407] [11408] [11409] [11410]
>Yet, unless there were public cemeteries in many places on the circuits of
>the various Gypsy bands, I can't think what was done with dead bodies.
>I don't believe the Rom would have been given permission to bury their
>dead in most Christian cemeteries, which were the only cemeteries in
>some places.
Wait a minute, Bob--the "official" religion of most Rom is the religion
of the country in which they spend most of their time. They do indeed
continue to follow their ancient purity rules and rituals, but they
are sometimes nominally and often sincerely Christians, Muslims, and
followers of other faiths. Consider the heavy Rom presence at Ste.
Anne Beaupre and other Catholic shrines during festivals, for instance.
So I don't think that, in spite of their "irreligous" reputation,
they would be denied burial in all Christian cemeteries. AND, you
must remember, there are many municipal cemeteries in Europe, to which
access is not controlled by the local clergy.
Kiwi Carlisle
carlisle(at)wuchem.wustl.edu
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 16:20:16 -0400
From: Seth Foster
Subject: Re: Manitoba flooding = loss of novels [11404] [11411]
STEPHEN DAVIES, MT. ROYAL COLLEGE wrote:
> damage. I was reading Mario R.'s concern on Victorian-L that
> original materials from the Victorian era are disappearing
> (disintegrating?) all the time. This may be a textbook
> example of that.
>
> Stephen D
> SDavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca
Disintegrating due to acidity or just plain being kept in an attic where
the mice and the silverfish get at them, being tossed out as too old to
be interesting, whatever.
What I was especially talking about on victorian-l, though, was that a
lot of material is simply unavailable. Some of it is out of print.
Other things were never published in the first place -- diaries,
letters, and the like. Some of *these* things are being tossed out,
too, by people who simply do not realize the value of the glimpses into
history they provide. Others are being stored, sometimes even under
excellent conditions, but because they are unique they are limited to
the library or collection that stores them -- and they are also rendered
inaccessible simply because researchers don't know the things are there.
Mario Rups
markin(at)patriot.net
===0===
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 19:51:01 -0400 (EDT)
From: Debah(at)aol.com
Subject: Re: Reeve's modern alchemy [11403] [11412]
I enjoyed this story and it's antiquated science very much. Perhaps like
S.T. said we are removed enough from the period that it's not bad science
anymore but something more on the level of the original alchemists. Although
I picked up immediately on the clue of the blue eyes and wondered where they
got this dark eyed daughter (like we didn't know anyway that SOMETHING WAS
WRONG, this was just the final proof). I really couldn't pick that many
holes in the theory of Prescott's new force. However, what put me off his
theories wasn't the idea of the lifeforce or its capability of changing
copper to gold (staying within element groups) but the addition of the occult
aspect of telepathy. The minute that was added into it just became too much.
All I could think was "Prescott, you're cramming too much in to make this
scientific." Crossing over into the occult seriously devalued his scientific
credibility. But in the times it was written this certainly wouldn't have
been seen as the same kind of obstacle when we think of Mesmerism, seances
and other ways to reach beyond.
But after reading this I'm afraid I actually missed what kind of ray this was
that could create temporary blindness (for however long) and the skin rashes.
Radioactive? Xray? For some reason at the end I was looking to find the
clues to a real kind of invisible ray. Was it Xray and I somehow misread?
What was surprising was bringing back the old man to life w/o permanent
oxygen deprivation to his brain. More than 7 minutes? Or was he only
"mostly dead". I was glad he was brought back because it would be so unfair,
at least he had a chance to truly make amends with his real daughter. But
wouldn't he have had serious brain damage? Okay, I'm asking too much of the
science again.
It doesn't matter. I enjoyed the story regardless and am more than willing
to suspend some belief for the required effect of the period. Interesting.
Deborah
Deborah McMillion
debah(at)aol.com
http://www.primenet.com/~bucanek/
End of Gaslight digest.