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Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

blogs.royalsociety.org

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Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#21

Post by gerdesj »

This is absolutely fascinating. There is a handy transliteration available by clicking on the sheet of paper icon. Some bloke called Mr Hook gets around a bit in the 1680s at least:

Mr Hook gave an account of the book recommended to him affirming that the Author had well determined the problem of the pressure of a body upon an enclined plain; the second part about the separation of the gall in the Liver to which he could not so readily asset Mr Hook affirmed that the manner of evacuating Damps at Leige is after the manner of the engine for consuming smoke (17 Nov 1686) At that time (~November 1686) body preservation is a pretty hot topic, interspersed with say Mr Hook Shewed to the Satisfaction of the Company the Shells in & on the Nautilus

This is a window on the past that is absolutely priceless. The minutes are terse and have the feel of being hastily scribbled at times but that adds to their charm. You keep on finding gems:

the Magnitudes et cet of London and Paris; - so et cet is perhaps the original abbreviation of et cetera, before the modern etc. etc is very much a feature in modern English usage and to see it in use back in the 1680s shows a pretty deep continuity within some aspects of English (yes, I know it is really Latin).

Smashing.

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#22

Post by jetrink »

gerdesj wrote: post #21

This is absolutely fascinating. There is a handy transliteration available by clicking on the sheet of paper icon. Some bloke called Mr Hook gets around a bit in the 1680s at least: Mr Hook gave an account of the book recommended to him affirming that the Author had well determined the problem of the pressure of a body upon an enclined plain; the second part about the separation of the gall in the Liver to which he c…

I bet that was Robert Hooke[1]. They were less exacting about spelling back then.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hooke#Royal_Society

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#24

Post by thaumasiotes »

benj111 wrote: post #16
benbreen wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee houses existed at that time but coffee itself was not thought of in quite the same way as today. It wasn’t taken for granted that it was a harmless stimulant, or even a stimulant at all. The idea of taking a pill to cure a disease did exist; it would’ve been called a “specific.” Pills were handmade but were fairly common based on what I’ve seen, although cordials, electuaries, and other drinkables predominated…

Interesting, thanks. "or even a stimulant at all" Its strange that tea was thought of as a stimulant but not coffee?! I could drink 10 cups of tea, and only feel the urge to wee. That much coffee and I'd be up the wall! But then the Victorians were shooting up opiates whilst warning of the dangers of alcohol so I suppose there is a lot of 'cultural conditioning' going on there (and here).

> I could drink 10 cups of tea, and only feel the urge to wee. That much coffee and I'd be up the wall!

This just looks like evidence that you don't drink tea and don't know what's in it, or that you've confused herbal tea with tea from the tea plant. Tea seems to have about half the amount of caffeine coffee does. For example, here are figures from the Mayo Clinic:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-h...

Coffee is more of a stimulant than tea, but tea is still very strong, so it's unsurprising that the British were aware of its effects. If you're trying to stay awake, tea will do the job.

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#25

Post by benbreen »

hrpolice wrote: post #18
benbreen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tons! Some examples show up in my dissertation, which is available here [1]. Best way to find them is to search "royal society" in the PDF. One of the more interesting examples is Robert Boyle's list of "desiderata" for future scientific discoveries which includes entries like "Potent Druggs to alter or Exalt Imagination, Waking, Memory, and other functions, and appease pain, procure innocent sleep, harmless dreams"…

Impressive knowledge displayed in the document linked. I wonder what your opinion is from a historic perspective on drug legislation. Is the war on drugs a phase we experienced like the alcohol prohibition in the 1920-1930 era or are we just getting started?

Short answer is that, on a very long time horizon, I think drug laws probably are just a phase that will go away. But socially- or religiously-enforced policing of conduct is as old as human culture itself, so even if drugs become decriminalized, the tendency to proclaim some substances or actions "taboo" is unlikely to ever disappear. The specific actions/substances in question can change fairly quickly, however.

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#26

Post by justcorrect »

tamebadger wrote: post #7
benbreen wrote: post #2

This is great news. I'm a historian and have gone to the Royal Society archives to read these draft minutes in the past (I was looking for references to experiments involving psychoactive drugs on one research trip, and on another I was researching the Royal Society's run-in with the infamous impostor George Psalmanazar). Happy to answer questions about the meeting minutes or their historical significance if anyone i…

Does any of the meeting minutes contain a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz that you know of ?

First page of the 1707-1711 editions, I found this sentence, sure there's likely more ...

"A proposall was read by Dr. Papin concerning

a new invented [deleted] to be row'd with oars mov'd

by heat. The farther consideration of It was also referred to ye. next meeting.

A letter was read from Mr. Leibnitz concerning

Mr. Papin & this new boat."

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#27

Post by thaumasiotes »

jandrese wrote: post #5
webaholic wrote: post #3

Is it only me? I think I lost the ability to read cursive handwriting. I tried reading a few pages, and it is really hard for me to follow what is written.

The handwriting is pretty sloppy on at least the first few pages from what I see. A lot of the letters become so small that they're little more than bumps on a line. Being in cursive certainly doesn't help either. Some of the words use alternate spellings which makes them a little more difficult to recognize. But really, cursive is optimized for reducing the possibility of failure (inkblots) on primitive quill pens,…

> Even the best most precise cursive tends to be more difficult to read than modestly competent print.

That's purely a practice effect, like the fake finding that lowercase text is easier to read than all-caps text. (People you pull off the street do indeed read lowercase text faster. After a minor amount of practice, this advantage disappears.)

There are a lot of cases here where a series of letters appears to have been reduced to just a wave pattern. But the biggest problems I have at first glance are

- You can't zoom in far enough

- Some letters are written in an unexpected (consistent, but not modern) way. Look at how e is always written like you'd expect a cursive o or a σ to look. This difficulty will be easily overcome if you spend any time reading the text, but as of now I have a lot more trouble identifying what letters have been written than identifying what word a sequence of known letters is supposed to represent.

On the other hand, a lot of it looks perfectly fine. "This occasioned much discourse of the cause of Fountaines, and Dr Robinson was of opinion that (stormes?) occasiond by a subterraneall heat, either of fire or" (eighth bullet point at the beginning of 1686).

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#29

Post by hrpolice »

benbreen wrote: post #25
hrpolice wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive knowledge displayed in the document linked. I wonder what your opinion is from a historic perspective on drug legislation. Is the war on drugs a phase we experienced like the alcohol prohibition in the 1920-1930 era or are we just getting started?

Short answer is that, on a very long time horizon, I think drug laws probably are just a phase that will go away. But socially- or religiously-enforced policing of conduct is as old as human culture itself, so even if drugs become decriminalized, the tendency to proclaim some substances or actions "taboo" is unlikely to ever disappear. The specific actions/substances in question can change fairly quickly, however.

Maybe criminalizing religions would be an answer. It is fascinating how perception of drugs changes over time. Even the Dutch royal family had a cocaine manufacturing site last century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nederlandsche_Coca%C3%AFnefabr...

Re: Digitized minutes of Royal Society meetings taken between 1686 and 1711

#30

Post by kakkun »

For those that are interested in what else the Royal Society archives hold, I wholly recommend the Objectivity YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtwKon9qMt5YLVgQt1tvJKg) created by Brady Haran (of Periodic Videos, Numberphile, Computerphile, etc.)
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