Wooden Plates Painted with Scenes from Aesop's Fables

English, c. 1600. In the Art Institute of Chicago. For an archaeologist it is always a bit disconcerting to contemplate how much of European material culture was made of wood and leather.

Ancient Herbal Remedies and Bacterial Evolution

A Page from Bald's Leechbook

Human societies have built up a huge repertoire of ways to fight disease, many of them involving herbal remedies. But when these remedies were tested by scientific doctors in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries they proved to have no or very little benefit.

But bacteria evolve very rapidly, especially when it comes to resistance to antibiotics. Which raises the question: did those old remedies once work, before bacteria evolved resistance to them? Some studies have suggested that this might be true:

In 2015, Harrison and a team of microbiologists and historians brewed a remedy from the Leechbook, called Bald’s Eyesalve, in the lab. They mixed garlic, onion, bovine bile and wine in a brass vessel, then allowed it to stand for nine days. In laboratory tests, Bald’s eyesalve displayed surprisingly effective antimicrobial activity against both Staphylococcus aureus and its drug-resistant form, MRSA.

These researchers also say that it may be harder for bacteria to evolve resistance to those old herbal mixtures than to modern, single-compound drugs.

Learning and thinking about this completely changed my attitude toward ancient and medieval herbal medicine. I used to think about this entirely in psychological terms, wondering why people devoted so much effort to useless remedies, but not I wonder which compounds had real value, and when, and how much ancient and medieval people understood about their effects.

Alchemy, Porcelain, and the Beginnings of Modernity

Medici Porcelain Dish in the Met

Here is something I did not know about until today but should have suspected: an 16th-century Florentine attempt to recreate Chinese porcelain:

The grand-ducal workshop of Casino di San Marco was one of several founded by Francesco I as a laboratory for experimentation where painters, sculptors, academics and artisans worked together to investigate natural phenomena and invent new materials and processes. Francesco had a great personal interest in alchemy and glassmaking, as well as in collecting at and antiquities, and he invested much time and money promoting technical innovation by marrying the experimental sciences in the applied arts.

On the first floor of the palace alone were glass works, an alchemy laboratory, foundries for metal work, including the forging of steel tools hard enough to hew porphyry, furnaces where rock crystal was fused to create decorative objects and precious stones (emeralds, rubies) were counterfeited, and ovens for producing a soft paste porcelain that became known as “Medici porcelain.”

Unable to find suitable clay, the Florentine craftsmen tried to make their own:

It is thought that the body of Medici porcelain consists of glass, powdered rock crystal, and sand, as well as clay from Vicenza and white earth from Faenza.

The first good examples of what would come to be known as “Medici Porcelain” were made in 1575. It is thought that about 350 vessels were eventually made, of which 60 survive. This was what we now call "soft-paste" porcelain, generally considered to be lower quality than the "hard paste" original. Because the process was so cumbersome, and the firing required so much fuel, it was far from economical, and the workshop was closed after Duke Francesco's death.

So, an economic failure of no great significance. But look closer and you get yet another glimpse of the wave of innovation that was sweeping across Renaissance Europe, building into a tsunami of growth and change. Everywhere you look you see people trying new ways of doing things: of building ships, of making glass and pottery, of printing books, of erecting buildings. People invented machines for making ceramic water pipes. It took a long time for all this innovation to transform Europe, but once this competition in innovation was launched it did not stop until everything was different than it had been.

Notice also the part played in this by Alchemy. Alchemy has a dubious reputation now because so much of it was devoted to turning lead into gold, and because some practitioners were more interested in spiritual transformation than chemistry. But alchemy always had a practical side, and even some men obsessed with making gold found that to fund their researches they had to use their chemical skill for more mundane purposes. The European ceramic and glass industries made huge advances between 1400 and 1760, and men trained in alchemy played a large part in that work.

Chemical skill built up slowly, but by 1700 every sort of chemical process, including making gunpowder and casting bronze, had been greatly improved.

This restlessness, this refusal to stick to the tried and true, this endless searching for more knowledge and better ways of doing things, is what gave us the modern world.

Models of Ancient Egyptian Life

People around the world have hit on the idea of placing models of daily life in tombs. The most common type is models of houses; of which this is the most common Egyptian version. This is called a "Soul House" and it is interptreted as a porch and garden.

In Egypt the making of wooden funerary models goes back into prehistory and lasted into Roman times, but it was at its height between about 2200 and 1200 BC. This is a procession of people bearing offerings.

This famous example, now in the Met, shows a high official named Meketre presiding over a census of his cattle.

Boats are a common topic, including both fishing boats and funerary barges.

Carpentry workshop.

And of course there is much agriculture and food preparation.

I love these little windows into life thouands of years ago.

Albrecht Dürer's House

I did not know, until an acquaintance posted pictures on Facebook, that Albrecht Dürer's house in Nuremberg still survives. That's it above.

The house was built around 1420; Dürer purchased it in 1509. Since 1871, it has been a museum dedicated to Dürer's life and work.

It has, of course, been restored over the years, and it took substantial damage in WW II bombing that took five years to repair. But a remarkable amount of the fabric dates to Dürer's time. This is a recreated painter's workshop of the time.

And since we're on the subject, we might as well look at a few of the master's works. Self-portrait at the age of 13.

The famous self-portrait at the age of 28, 1500

Young Hare, 1502. Dürer's renderings of plants and animals achieved an unsurpassed perfection.

Emperor Maximilian I, 1519 detail.

And some woodcuts. Knight with Death and the Devil.

A personal favorite of mine, Melancholia.

Some people pass through the world leaving a mark only on those who knew and loved or hated them, while others send waves across the globe.

Laran, the Etruscan God of War

This small bronze statue is identified as Laran, the ancient Etruscan god of war. The Romans equated him straight out with Mars, although some noted that Laran could wield lightning.

Same statue. I wonder about calling this Laran. It certainly could be, but there are lots of these bronze statuettes from the late Bronze Age into the Roman Empire across the whole western Mediterranean. 

We know that some images from Tuscany depict Laran, since they helpfully include his name. This mirror is the most famous.

The rest of these, as far as I am concerned, might be Laran, or Mars, or some local hero. 

You often see the ancient Etruscans described as "mysterious," but thanks to Roman writers we know more about them than most peoples of the first millenium BC, and other than their obsession with reading lightning as omens, they seem much like other peoples of their time.

Johns Hopkins, William Osler, and the Founding of Modern American Medicine

Johns Hopkins (1795–1873) was a Maryland-born Quaker from a business family. He got early into the wholesaling business, moving manufactured goods to farm country in western Maryland and Virginia and buying the products of those regions in return. He built up enough capital to be an early investor in the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, serving for a while as its Treasurer, and ran a bank that invested in manufacturing companies. By 1847 he had retired.

Then he did something quite remarkable. He bought thirteen acres of land east of Baltimore and set aside his whole fortune of about $7 million to found three new institutions: "Johns Hopkins University", "The Johns Hopkins Hospital", and "Johns Hopkins Colored Orphan Asylum." At the time this was the largest charitable bequest in US history. Never one to leave things to chance, Hopkins recruited twelve prominent Maryland men to serve as trustees of the new institutions and wrote detailed instructions for them to follow.

For our purposes the most important instructions governed the hospital. It should "in construction and arrangement, compare favorably with any other institution of like character in this country or in Europe." The trustees should "secure for the service of the Hospital, physicians and surgeons of the highest character and greatest skill." And they should "bear constantly in mind that it is my wish and purpose that the hospital shall ultimately form a part of the Medical School of that university for which I have made ample provision in my will."

And thus was born the modern teaching hospital. I can't find out much about the trustees, but they must have been capable fellows, because they brought Hopkins' vision to life. They recruited those top surgeons by the simple expedient of offering the highest salaries ever paid to doctors, anywhere. One of those who accepted was Canadian physician William Osler (1849-1919).

Osler was another remarkable man, one of the generation of doctors who turned medicine from a mishmash of quackery, Galenism, folk wisdom, and surgical speed into a scientific discipline. He was also, apparently, a great teacher, a man who could take something everyone sort of knew and express it in an unforgettable phrase. Like, "Listen to your patient, he is telling you the diagnosis."

Before this time, medical school consisted almost entirely of lectures and demonstrations. But Osler thought a more practical approach was needed, and he created one:

Osler, the first chief of the Department of Medicine, is credited with originating the idea of a residency, in which recently graduated physicians receive advanced training in their specialty while treating patients under supervision; then, as now, residents comprise most of the medical staff of the hospital. He also introduced the idea of bringing medical students into actual patient care early in their training; at the time medical school consisted almost entirely of lectures. Osler's contribution to practical education extends to the creation of "grand rounds", the practice of leading physicians discussing the most difficult cases in front of assembled medical students, for the benefit of patients and students. The term "rounds" derives from the circular ward where bedside teaching occurred. He once said he hoped his tombstone would say only, "He brought medical students into the wards for bedside teaching."

That last seems to have been one of his favorite lines, since it exists in several slightly different versions of different dates. And since I just witnessed my own doctors bringing students or "fellows" with them on their own rounds, I can confirm that it remains central to the teaching experience of Hopkins. (Sadly I never got to be the subject of discussion; I think I was too boring and simple a case. But the unfortunate person in the shadowed ICU room two doors down got at least two long discussions that I witnessed.)

Johns Hopkins went on to be one of the great institutions of modern medicine, launching whole branches of surgery and being the first place in the Americas to train female doctors, This, you know, is the thing that distinguishes the modern world from all that came before. In our day a man can get filthy rich in business and decide to invest his profits in creating an entirely new class of institution to solve a problem that past ages regarded as just an inevitable part of life.

I believe in a dynamic world where we try to make things better, not a bitter one in which everyone idiotically moans on about how much better things were in the old days. So I celebrate men like Johns Hopkins and William Osler who glimpsed the future and worked in concrete ways to make it real.

Qin Hui, Nationalism, and the Endurance of Hate

Qin Hui (1091-1155) was a government minister and important political figure of the Southern Song Dynasty. The "Southern Song" is what we call the ongoing Song Dynasty after they had lost northern China to a tribe of steppes nomads called the Jurchen. The leaders of the Jurchen, called in China the Jin Dynasty, were bent on subjugating all of China to their rule, leading to a long conflict we call the Jin-Song Wars.

(Incidentally the need of the technologically more sophisticated Song to fight off the more martial Jin led to major advances in gunpowder weapons, especially rocketry.)

Anyway there was a long period in which China was divided between a Han-ruled half and a barbarian-ruled half. The leadership of the Han-led Song realm was divided between a faction that sought accommodation with the Jurchens, for example by paying tribute, and a faction that wanted to fight to the death.

Qin Hui

Enter Qin Hui. According to a long, nearly contemporary narrative of suspect neutrality, he was captured by the Jin but later returned to the Song court, claiming a miraculous escape. There he became a leader of the peace party, which led his enemies to insist that he was a traitor and that the Jin had allowed his escape.

Yue Fei, from a Song Dynasty Scroll

One of his opponents was a general named Yue Fei, who was, wikipedia informs us, a "national heroic person."  Qin Hui outmaneuvered Yue Fei and negotiated a peace treaty with the Jin that required the Song emperor to accept a subservient status toward the Jurchens.

Yue was imprisoned, but even there his recognized status as a heroic fighter made him dangerous to his enemies, so Qin Hui arranged for his trial and execution on charges of treason. Love this detail:

When asked by General Han Shizhong what crime Yue had committed, Qin Hui replied, "Though it isn't sure whether there is something that he did to betray the dynasty, maybe there is.” The phrase "maybe there is" (simplified Chinese: 莫须有; traditional Chinese: 莫須有; pinyin: mò xū yǒu) has entered the Chinese language as an expression to refer to fabricated charges.

Qin Hui died not long afterward, still in power.

When a new emperor came to the throne he pardoned his predeccssor's enemies, including Yue Fei, and the general was rapidly enshrined as a Chinese hero. A grand tomb was built for him, and iron statues of Yue Fei, his wife, and two of his subordinates were made to grovel before the tomb. It became traditional for people to spit on the statues and slap their faces.

And there they still are, more or less, since the statues have been stolen and replaced many times; most recently they disappeared during the Cultural Revolution, and new ones were installed in 1979. And to this day people still slap them and spit on them.

I find all of this fascinating because of the enduring patterns it represents. Nationalists always see those who compromise with outsiders as traitors and honor those who fought to the death; you see this, for example, in Poland, where noblemen who cooperated with the Russians are today villified, even if they were working effectively within the imperial system to make conditions better in Poland. Stalwart military men are usually the heroes, their enemies backstairs schemers who do them in via slanderous rumor, preferably in alliance with wicked women.

(And in another ancient trope, the emperor who lost northern China to the Jurchens is remembered as having "excessive interest in the arts.")

There is a strain within humanity that prefers brave defeat to effective compromise, that wants things to be clear and simple and hates those who work with subtlety and caution, that villifies softness and venerates bold killers. We deserve to be bold and free and strong and victorious, and we should fight to force others to honor us; those who accept subordination over destruction are traitors and deserve to be spit on for eternity.

Hecate, Goddess of Many Guises

Maximilian Pirner, Hecate, 1901

Since Shakespeare's time we have mostly associated Hecate with magic, witchcraft, and the moon. But one of the striking things about ancient paganism, once you delve into it, is how many different powers a goddess might have. Hecate was associated, at various times, with household economy, dogs, keys, doorways, weasels, torchlit processions, crossroads, ghosts, wealth, childbirth, maidenhood, good fortune, the entrance to the underworld, and victory in battle.

So far as I can tell, Hecate *was* strongly associated with magic and the moon in western Europe by late Roman times, and it was certainly how Europeans saw Hecate in the Renaissance. But farther east, and further back in time, she seems to have been seen quite differently.

Temple of Hecate in Lagina, Turkey

Hesiod's Theogony (c. 700 BC) includes a long passage called The Hymn to Hecate. This begins with a description of her lineage among the titans

And Asteria conceived and bare Hecate whom Zeus the son of Cronos honoured above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honour also in starry heaven, and is honoured exceedingly by the deathless gods. For to this day, whenever any one of men on earth offers rich sacrifices and prays for favour according to custom, he calls upon Hecate. Great honour comes full easily to him whose prayers the goddess receives favourably, and she bestows wealth upon him; for the power surely is with her. For as many as were born of Earth and Ocean amongst all these she has her due portion. The son of Cronos did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea. Also, because she is an only child, the goddess receives not less honour, but much more still, for Zeus honours her. Whom she will she greatly aids and advances: she sits by worshipful kings in judgement, and in the assembly whom she will is distinguished among the people. And when men arm themselves for the battle that destroys men, then the goddess is at hand to give victory and grant glory readily to whom she will.  . . .

Which makes Hecate seem like something much more than the shady goddess of crossroads and sorcery we read of later. Everything about Hesiod is disputed, but he may have been born east of the Aegean in Anatolia, and as I already suggested, Hecate's cult may have been different in the Greek east than the Roman west. In classical Athens Hecate still seems to have been an impeccably respectable deity, listed as one of the four protectors of the household and supplied with a small triangular temple adjacent to the Agora.

Enodia, relief from Macedon

One theory is that Hecate's identity gradually shifted because she merged with a Thessalian goddess called Enodia (meaning "traveller"), who wandered the earth with a retinue of ghosts and could be met at remote crossroads. Some things about Hecate's iconography, such as carrying two torches, seem to derive from older images of Enodia, so there certainly could be a connection. Enodia was associated with the Moon, and Hecate was often invoked alongside Artemis, another Lunar deity, so it is hardly surprising that Hecate was increasingly invoked via the Moon.

Hecate escorting Persephone from Hades, with her two torches; this scene appears in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

Hecate was often depicted with three bodies, or three heads. We don't know why; Pausanius didn't either, merely noting in his ancient travelogue that some images showed her singly and others tripled. There is speculation that this represents her dominion, alluded to by Thesiod, over the three realms of earth, sea, and sky. But I can't find that this is mentioned in any ancient source. So maybe we should just attribute it to the ancient Indo-European habit of tripling goddesses, as in the three fates or the nine muses.

This image, from the Pergamon Altar, shows Hecate battling a giant. She has three bodies, equipped with torch, sword, and spear.

The Roman satirist Lucan (1st century AD) gives us our first look at Hecate's future career. His sinister witch calls on Hecate as "the goddess we witches revere" and describes her as a "pallid decaying body," so foul that she must wear a mask when she visits Olympus.

The magical papyri from Egypt and Syria invoke her often, usually for black magic but also sometimes as a protectress. Here is one, from the first century AD:

Lady Hekate of the heavens, Hekate of the underworld, Hekate of the crossroads, Hekate of the triple-face, Hekate of the single-face, cut the hearts of the thief or the thieves who took the items contained in this deposition. And let the earth not be walkable, the sea not sailable; let there be no enjoyment of life, no increase of children, but may utter destruction visit them or him.

Another:

Be bound before Hermes of the underworld and Hekate of the underworld… and just as this lead is worthless and cold, so let that man and his property be worthless and cold. And those who are with him who have spoken and counselled concerning me.

Hecate's prominence in the magical papyri confirms her transformation into a goddess mainly associated with sorcery. As this account has it, from being a goddess of great general power,

She became a goddess of ghosts, of necromancy, and the moon; Her torchlight no longer a symbol of life alone, but of traversal between life and death. 

In modern times of course, Hecate has changed again and she is now the patroness of many Wiccans. Her three faces are often interpreted as representing three stages in a woman's life, youth, mother, and crone, and her canine friends have lost their sinister associations with the underworld and become labradoodles. 

But she lives on, always changing to meet her worshippers' needs.