
5 years ago the Special collections from the College Library Leiden acquired it and manuscript collection in the estate of J.M.H. van de Sande (d. 2010), a Nederlander pharmacist. Included in the ERC-project around the writing practices of physicians. brought by Volker Hess and Andrew Mendelsohn in the Charit in Berlin, I examined one of these simple manuscripts, now catalogued as BPL 3603. Certainly one of Van de Sandes special interests was Paracelsus and Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644). This interest would let you know that this Nederlander language manuscript of 70 folios arrived to his possession. Indeed, around the ex libris of Van de Sandes Bibliotheca Pharmacia. the note &"612.8 Helm&", shows that Van living room Sande catalogued the manuscript along with other functions by Van Helmont. More pencil writing on a single page reads &"Van Helmonts recepten&" or Van Helmonts recipes.
Sietske Fransen, that has researched Van Helmont and the boy Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614-1699) (see for instance (16/10/2014 ) and (30/12/ 2014 ), and that i made the decision to lead a brand new series about this Nederlander recipe book towards the Recipe Project. It will likely be a terrific way to continue our research about this manuscript and share our breakthroughs, much like the way in which Hillary Nunn and Rebecca Laroche did here. Our beginning point is to ask exactly what the manuscript will easily notice us about its anonymous author or authors as well as their studying and writing practices.
Test in the manuscript it's obvious it contains material from Van Helmont’s publications besides recipes. Additionally, it contains recipes from Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486-1535) and Johan van Beverwijck (1594-1647), among others. Its dating of ca. 1677 is dependant on the look of this date on page one from the manuscript and will mean you get the most recent dates noted using the recipes.
The recipes are initially arranged alphabetically based on the affliction they're fond of. From about midway with the manuscript, however, they're also manufactured based on the product from the recipe or its primary component. They're evenly and uniformly distributed within the page and then leave only only a little space for additions. All the recipes have been in Nederlander. The first alphabetical order along with the little annotation space shows that the manuscript was carefully designed like a pretty much final record of recipes.
A couple of things immediately intrigued us concerning the manuscript. Rather of the title page, page one contains three very fundamental tables: those of pharmaceutical indications of astrological signs and a summary of conversions of Arabic to Roman numerals. Around the final page we discover a table titled &"explanation of figures generally utilization of alchemists&" and something of &"figures and weights of medics and apothecaries&". An issue we wish to raise for more discussion is exactly what the inclusion of these tables, states concerning the intention behind the selection of the manuscript.
In addition, individuals couple of sources for that recipes which are named, seem to be printed books. The sources reveal that the compiler from the collection would be a keen readers of medical works in Nederlander. The recognition of those publications could be gauged using their growing number available on the market within the decades before and following a composition from the manuscript. Significantly less is famous however about how exactly by whom these books were read. This manuscript offers to inform us a good deal concerning the practices of the readers of those publications.
Finally, it's very exciting to determine texts by two contemporary physicians in the Southern and northern Netherlands together within the manuscript. Although Van Beverwijck from Dordrecht and Van Helmont from The city both authored in Nederlander, they're rarely discussed together within the historic literature. This really is understandable in the character of the writings.
An engraving and the start of a poem by Cats, illustrating the chapter &"What existence includes by what means it's maintained in health&". Johan van Beverwijck, Schat der Gesont heyt (Amsterdam 1643) p. 60.
Van Beverwijck printed several medical books in Nederlander, most particularly Schat der Gesontheyt (Treasure of Health ) and Schat der Ongesontheyt (Treasure of Unhealth iness) . which grew to become extremely popular and made an appearance in lots of editions in the 1630’s onwards. During these publications his medical writings were alternated with poems through the famous Nederlander poet Jacob Cats (1577-1660) and highlighted with engravings. The celebrity of those books made Van Beverwijck a family group name. Van Beverwijck thus effectively adapted the medication he was trained at college to some non-academic audience.
Van Helmont however is better noted for his Latin works, for example Ortus Medicinae (An Upswing of drugs, 1648), while his Nederlander medical publication Dageraed (1659) far less known. And regardless of the vernacular language, this book isn't as accessible as Van Bever- wijck’s publications using its poems and photographs, and it was not read broadly through the seventeenth-century Nederlander audience.
Despite their contrasting reputations, the compiler of BPL 3603 apparently considered both authors to become valuable sources for his recipe book. The manuscript provides us therefore by having an exciting illustration of seventeenth-century comparative studying of two authors which were regarded as read by different audiences.
We expect to locating out much more about the assembler from the manuscript along with the means by that they used his sources. The following month, Sietske will talk about the fabric from Van Helmont further.