Lodestones and Gallstones: The Magnetic Iatrochemistry of Martin Lister (1639–1712)

Cook Harold J. , “Natural history and seventeenth-century Dutch and English medicine”, in The task of healing, ed. by Marland Hilary Pelling Margaret (Rotterdam, 1996), 253–70, p. 257.

“Martin Lister”, s.v. Dictionary of national biography (Oxford, 1937–38). See also “Martin Lister”, s.v. Biographia Britannica (London, 1747–66), as well as William Munk, The roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London (London, 1878), i, 442–5. For Lister's correspondence with Ray, please see Ray John , The correspondence of John Ray, ed. by Lankester Edwin (London, 1848; reprinted New York, 1975).

For instance, Lister's De scarabaeis britannicus was printed as part of Ray's publication of Willughby's Historia insectorum (London, 1710).

Lister's invention of the histogram to do barometric readings is mentioned by his colleague Plot Robert , “Observations of the wind, weather, and height of the mercury in the barometer…”, Philosophical transactions, xv (1685), 930–43; Lister's barometric method is also in Thomas Birch, The history of the Royal Society of London (London, 1756–57), iv, 222. Charles Kostelnick and Michael Hassett's Shaping information: The rhetoric of visual convention (Carbondale, 2003), 237, also mentions Lister's histogram, attributing its previous origins as “unknown”. For Lister's contributions to the mineral cabinets, see Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London, iv, 250; Flamsteed solicits Lister's advice in John Flamsteed to Martin Lister, 8 July 1703, Lister Correspondence, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, MS Lister 37, 74r.

Unwin Robert W. , “A provincial man of science at work: Martin Lister, F.R.S., and his illustrators 1670–1683”, in Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xlix (1995), 209–30; Woodley J. D. , “Anne Lister, illustrator of Martin Lister's Historiae conchyliorum (1685–1692)”, Archives of natural history, xxi (1994), 1994–9. For a recent analysis of Lister's cabinets of curiosities, see da Costa P. Fontes , “The culture of curiosity at the Royal Society in the first half of the eighteenth century”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, lvi (2002), 2002–66; Lister is also mentioned in Michael Hunter, “The social bias and changing fortunes of an early scientific institution: An analysis of the membership of the Royal Society, 1660–1685”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxxi (1976–77), 9–114.

Ashmole Elias Lilly William , The lives of those eminent antiquaries Elias Ashmole … and Mr William Lilly, written by themselves; containing first, William Lilly's History of his life and times, with notes, by Mr Ashmole: Secondly, Lilly's life and death of Charles the First: And lastly The life of Elias Ashmole … by way of a diary. With several occasional letters, ed. by Burman Charles (London, 1774), 381.

King William , The Art of Cookery, In Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry. With some Letters to Dr. Lister, and Others: Occasion'd principally by the Title of a book publish'd by the Doctor, being the Works of Apicius Ceolius … Humbly inscrib'd to the Honourable Beef Steak Club (London, 1706); Lister Martin , A journey to Paris in 1698 (New York, 1974); King William , A Journey to London, in the year 1698. After the ingenious method of that made by Dr Martin Lister to Paris, in the same year … (London, 1699); Lough John , “Martin Lister's travels in France”, Durham University journal, lxxvi (1983), 1983–41.

Carr J. in his entry on Lister for the Dictionary of scientific biography notes that “Thomas Shadwell clearly had Lister in mind when he created Sir Nicholas Gimcrack”. For a translation and annotation of Lister's work on arachnids, see Lister Martin , Martin Lister's English spiders: 1678, transl. by Parker John Harley Basil (Colchester, 1992).

Shadwell Thomas , The virtuoso, ed. by Nicolson Marjorie Hope Rodes David Stuart (Lincoln, NE, and London, 1966), 69.

Unwin , “A provincial man of science at work” (ref. 5), 209–30. See Keynes Geoffrey , “Dr. Martin Lister, F.R.S., some uncollected authors”, The book collector, xxviii (1979), 501–20, and Wood S. , “Martin Lister, zoologist and physician”, Annals of medical history, i (1929), 1929–104.

Raven Charles , John Ray, naturalist (Cambridge, 1986), 140.

Ibid., 139–40.

Parker J. R. , “Dr. Martin Lister F.R.S.: Physician and zoologist”, in Martin Lister's English spiders (ref. 8), 26–27.

Carr J. , “The biological work of Martin Lister (1638–1712)”, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Leeds, 1974.

Carr J. , s.v. “Martin Lister”, Dictionary of scientific biography, viii, 179.

Raven , John Ray, naturalist (ref. 11), 141.

Parker , Martin Lister's English spiders, 1678 (ref. 8), 29; Bell James R. , “The emergence of manipulative experiments in ecological spider research (1684–1973)”, The journal of arachnology, xxxiii (2005), 826–49, p. 829. See also Wilson David S. , “The flying spider”, Journal of the history of ideas, xxxii (1971), 1971–58.

Parker , Martin Lister's English spiders, 1678 (ref. 8), 29.

Parker , Martin Lister's English spiders, 1678 (ref. 8), 26.

Dolling Bill , “Martin Lister (1638–1712): Father of British hemipterology?”, Het news, ix (2007), 3.

See for example, Findlen's Paula Possessing nature: Museums, collecting, and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1996); Daston Lorraine , Wonders and the order of Nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 2001); Cooper Alix , Inventing the indigenous: Local knowledge and natural history in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 2007).

Jardine Nicolas Secord James , Cultures of natural history (Cambridge, 1996), 100–1. In a short article, J. D. Woodley has also somewhat resuscitated Lister's contributions to conchology with his studies of the contributions of Lister's female family members in the creation of his masterwork, Historiae conchyliorum (1685–92). See Woodley J. D. , “Anne Lister, illustrator of Martin Lister's Historiae conchyliorum” (ref. 5).

MS Lister 39, Lister Adversaria, Bodleian, Oxford University, 26r. Ff. 22–26 appear to comprise an unprinted preface to Lister's Letters & divers other mixt discourses in natural philosophy (York, 1683).

For information on St John's and natural history, see Gascoigne John , Cambridge in the Age of Enlightenment: Science, religion, and politics from the Restoration to the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2002), 61–62; Goddard Jonathan , A Discourse setting forth the Unhappy Condition of the Practice of Physick in London (London, 1670; written 1665), 12.

Iliffe Robert , “Foreign bodies: Travel, empire and the early Royal Society of London: Part I. Englishmen on tour”, Canadian journal of history, xxxiii (1998), 467–90, p. 475.

Cook , “Natural history and seventeenth-century Dutch and English medicine” (ref. 1), 257.

Ray , The correspondence of John Ray (ref. 2), 49.

Pumfrey Stephen , “Mechanizing magnetism in Restoration England: The decline of magnetic philosophy”, Annals of science, xliv (1987), 1–21, pp. 10–15.

Cook , “Natural history and seventeenth-century Dutch and English medicine” (ref. 1), 261.

Ibid.

Lister Martin , De fontibus medicates Angliae (London, 1684); Roos Anna Marie , “Martin Lister (1639–1712) and fools' gold”, Ambix, li (2004), 2004–42. Some of the background material in the section “pyrites in context” is taken from my previous article on Lister.

Lister Martin , Dissertatio de humoribus (London, 1701), A2r and v.

For the historiography of the influence of Van Helmont on English chemical physicians, see Mauskopf Seymour H. , “Chemistry and medical debate: Van Helmont to Boerhaave (review)”, Journal of the history of medicine and allied sciences, lviii (2003), 94–96; Debus Allen G. , Chemistry and medical debate: Van Helmont to Boerhaave (Nantucket, 2001); Principe Lawrence , The aspiring adept: Robert Boyle and his alchemical quest (Princeton, 1998); Rattansi P. M. , “The Helmontian—Galenist controversy in Restoration England”, Ambix, xii (1964), 1964–23.

In his analysis of corpuscular theories of magnetism in the early Royal Society, Stephen Pumfrey noted that Lister considered magnetism a chemical principle, but he did not analyse the medical applications of Lister's thinking and primarily saw him as a lesser foil to Robert Hooke. See Pumfrey , “Mechanizing magnetism in Restoration England” (ref. 28), 10.

Lister Martin , “Method for the History of Iron”, MS Lister 1, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 5r. Pliny's Natural history, which Lister cited extensively in the De fontibus, stated, “When struck with a nail or another stone they [pyrites] give off a spark, and if this is caught on sulphur or else on dry fungi or leaves it produces a flame instantaneously”. Pliny, Natural history, 36.29.138.

Lister , “Method for the History of Iron” (ref. 35), 18r.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), passim; [Anonymous],” Some observations and experiments about vitriol, tending to find out the nature of that substance, and to give further light in the inquiry after the principles and properties of other minerals: Communicated by a Fellow of the Society R. , who maketh use of chymistry chiefly as subservient to physiology”, Philosophical transactions, ix (1674), 1674–47, p. 41.

Emerton Norma , The scientific reinterpretation of form (Ithaca, 1984), 217.

See Oldroyd David , “Some phlogistic mineral schemes”, Annals of science, xxxi (1974), 269–305, p. 276 for an explanation of Witterung.

Debus Allen G. , “Thomas Sherley's Philosophical essay (1672): Helmontian mechanism as the basis of a new philosophy”, Ambix, xxvii (1980), 124–35, p. 124.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), 50, 54.

Ibid., 51.

Ibid.

Emerton , Scientific reinterpretation of form (ref. 38), 218.

van Helmont Johann , Oriatricke or physick refined, transl. by Chandler John (London, 1662), 695.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), 57.

Ibid., 58.

Ibid.

Ibid.

For Lister's mention of “Parisian Philosophers”, see De fontibus (ref. 31), 81. The full citation for Du Clos's work is: Sieur Du Clos, Observations on the mineral waters of France: Made in the Royal Academy of Sciences (London, 1684). The review of Lister's De fontibus in the Weekly memorials for the ingenious also mentioned the influence of the Royal Parisian Academy and Samuel Du Clos on Lister's De fontibus. Weekly memorials for the ingenious, l, issue of 15 January 1683/4, 380.

Holmes Frederic L. , “Analysis by fire and solvent extractions: The metamorphosis of a tradition”, Isis, lxii (1971), 130–48, p. 133. Du Clos explained to his readers in his Observations that “the Royal Academy of the Sciences have determined to employ themselves in the Enquiry of the Qualities of those [waters] in this Kingdom, which are most considerable. And till favourable occasion may offer to make Observations at their Springs, they have caused these Waters to be brought from several Provinces, with much care, to examine them in the usual Assemblies of the Naturalists of this Academy”. Observations (ref. 50), 2.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), 65. For Lister's distrust of Simpson, see Oldenburg to Lister, 4 September 1675, in The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, ed. by Rupert Hall Marie Boas (Madison, 1965–86), xi, 486–7.

For these debates, see Eddy M. D. , “The ‘Doctrine of Salts’ and Rev. John Walker's analysis of a Scottish spa (1749–1761)”, Ambix, xlviii (2001), 137–60, and Coley Noel G. , “Cures without care: ‘Chymical physicians’ and mineral water in seventeenth-century England”, Medical history, xxiii (1979), 1979–214. Simpson William , Hydrologia chymica or, The chymical anatomy of the Scarbrough, and other spaws in York-Shire: Wherein are interspersed, some animadversions upon Dr. Wittie's lately published treatise of the Scarbrough Spaw (London, 1669), 12.

Wittie Robert , Scarborough Spaw: Or a description of the nature and virtues of the spaw at Scarborough, Yorkshire (York and London, 1667), 148.

Highmore Nathaniel , “Some Considerations Relating to D. Witties Defence of Scarborough Spaw …”, Philosophical transactions, iv (1669), 1128–31.

Tancred Robinson to Martin Lister, Lister Correspondence, 15 March 1682/3, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, MS Lister 35, 89r. The references are to Edward Tyson (1651–1708), also a Royal Society Fellow, who became a member of the Royal College of Physicians in 1683, and Charles Goodall (d. 1712).

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), Part II, 71. Each of the two parts of Lister's work is separately paginated. All previous references to De fontibus were to Part I, and I will indicate part numbers in subsequent footnotes.

Rudwick M. J. S. , The meaning of fossils: Episodes in the history of palaeontology (London and New York, 1972); Rappaport Rhoda , When geologists were historians, 1665–1750 (Ithaca, 1997), 106–8.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), Part II, 78.

Ibid., 77.

Ibid., 76.

Ibid., 72.

Again Lister is claiming that Witterung or vaporous exhalations from minerals promote material change, in this case petrifaction.

Smyth Edward , “An Answer to Some Quaeries Proposed by Mr. William Molyneux”, Philosophical transactions, xv (1685), 1108–12, p. 1108. For more on Molyneaux, see Jones Greta Malcolm Elizabeth , Medicine, disease, and the state in Ireland, 1650–1940 (Cork, 1999), 91.

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 4), iv, 285.

National Park Service, “Petrified wood colors and petrification”, www.scienceviews.com.

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 4), iv, 243. Frances Aston was a friend and co-investigator of Robert Plot, Keeper of the Ashmolean, and he was chemically testing Lister's observations on spa waters. He wrote to Lister on 12 April 1683, “What you guesse of Dr. Plot and myself is very true, wee are very friends, and shall continue unaminous in our small imployment”. Aston also sent Lister one of Borelli's anatomical works. See Lister Correspondence, MS Lister 35, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, 31 and 33r.

Slare Frederick , “A Discourse about the Calculus Humanus”, 12 December 1683, Royal Society Library, RBO.6.1, 1v. This paper is also printed in the Philosophical transactions, xiv (1683), 523.

Slare , “A Discourse about the Calculus Humanus” (ref. 68), 3v.

Details about Grew's chemistry in his dissertation will be provided in my forthcoming article in Ambix.

Arnold Ken , Cabinets for the curious: Looking back at early English museums (Aldershot, 2006), 145.

Grew Nehemiah , Musaeum Regalis Societatis: Or, a catalogue and description of the natural and artificial rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham College (London, 1685), 351.

van Helmont Johannes , Opuscula medica inaudita: I. De lithiasi. II. De febribus. III. De humoribus Galeni. IV. De peste (Amsterdam, 1648; reprinted Brussels, 1966).

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), Part II, 81.

Ibid., 72.

Ibid., 83.

Ibid., 78.

Ibid., 76.

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 4), iv, 95.

Alice Stroup, A company of scientists: Botany, patronage, and community at the seventeenth-century Parisian Royal Academy of Sciences (Berkeley, 1990), 195.

Baudelot to Martin Lister, n.d., Letter books, Royal Society library, London, EL/B2/54, 2v.

Ibid.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), Part II, 81. For information about silver chamberpots, see Kravetz Robert E. , “A look back: Chamberpot”, American journal of gastroenterology, ci (2006), 1414–15. The less well-to-do had to content themselves with chamberpots of pewter, copper, or ceramics.

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 4), iv, 203.

Ibid., 239.

See ref. 25.

Steno Nicolas , The prodromus of Nicolaus Steno's dissertation, transl. by Winter John Garnett (New York, 1916).

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 4), iv, 250.

Tancred Robinson to Martin Lister, 12 April 1683, Bodleian Library, Oxford University, MS Lister 35, 34r.

Lister Martin , “An account of a stone grown to an iron bodkin in the bladder of a boy: Communicated by Dr. Lister fellow of the Royal Society”, Philosophical transactions, xv (1685), 882.

Birch , The history of the Royal Society of London (ref. 4), iv, 357.

Ecklund Jon , s.v. “Hungarian vitriol”, The Incompleat Chymist: Being an Essay on the Eighteenth-Century Chemist in His Laboratory, with a Dictionary of Obsolete Chemical Terms of the Period (Smithsonian Studies in History and Technology, no. 33; Washington, DC, 1975).

Lister , De humoribus (ref. 32), 348.

Ibid., 350.

Lister to Oldenburg. 13 September 1671, in The correspondence of Henry Oldenburg (ref. 52), viii, 264.

Lister Martin , “An account of a stone cut out from under the tongue of a man; lately sent in a letter of Mr. Listers to His Grace the Lord Arch-Bishop of York”, Philosophical transactions, vii (1672), 4062–64.

Lister , De humoribus (ref. 32), 350.

Lister , De humoribus (ref. 32), 350.

Sanctorius , De statica medicina aphorismorum sectiones septem: Cum commentario Martini Lister (London, 1701). Lister's commentary was enthusiastically reviewed in the Philosophical transactions, xxii (1700–1), 829–32, p. 832.

Sanctorius , Medicina statica: Being the aphorisms of Sanctorius, translated into English with large explanations by Quincy John (London, 1712), 1. Subsequent quotations referring to Sanctorius will be from this edition. For the history of insensible perspiration, including its classical origins, see Renbourn E. T. , “The natural history of insensible perspiration: A forgotten doctrine of health and disease”, Medical history, iv (1960), 1960–52.

Sanctorius , Medicina statica (ref. 100), 1.

Ibid.

Bylebyl Jerome , “The medical side of Harvey's discovery: The normal and the abnormal”, in William Harvey and his age: The professional and social context of the discovery of the circulation, ed. by Bylebyl Jerome J. (Baltimore, 1979), 28–102, pp. 40–41. See also Boerhaave Herman , Institutio in physick … (London, 1715), p. xvi; Boerhaave wrote “Therefore these two kinds of Motion, viz. a Pulse which exerts its Power in the Vessels and the Heart, and drives from the Centre to the Circumference, and the Tone which is seated in all the Fibres, membranous and muscular Parts …; if these are in a right State and in due Strength, Equality and Temperment, the Blood is received into the Parts equally and without Impediment, and from the same, a due Quantity is expell'd in due time, the Secretions naturally follow, and so the Business of Health is perform'd”.

Chang Ku-Ming Kevin , “‘Motus tonicus’: George Ernst Stahl's formulation of tonic motion and early modern medical thought”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, lxxviii (2004), 767–803, p. 789.

Lister , De humoribus (ref. 32), 351.

Ibid., 350.

Ibid., 351.

Lister Martin , “An ingenious proposal for a new sort of maps of countrys, together with tables of sands and clays, such chiefly as are found in the north parts of England, drawn up about 10 years since, and delivered to the Royal Society March 12 1683 by the learned Martin Lister M.D.”, Philosophical transactions, xiv (1684), 739–46.

Lister , De humoribus (ref. 32), 351.

Willmoth Frances , “John Flamsteed's Letter concerning the Natural Causes of Earthquakes”, Annals of science, xliv (1987), 23–70, pp. 57–58.

Lister , De humoribus (ref. 32), 351.

Lister , De fontibus (ref. 31), Part II, 72.

Eddy Matthew , “Set in stone: Medicine and the vocabulary of the earth in 18th-century Scotland”, in Science and beliefs: From natural philosophy to natural science, 1700–1900, ed. by Knight David M. Eddy Matthew D. (Aldershot, 2005), 77–94.

Eddy Matthew , “The fabric of the globe: Chemistry and geology in Enlightenment Edinburgh”, Chemical heritage newsmagazine, xxiv (2006), 23.

Carr J. , s.v. “Martin Lister”, Dictionary of scientific biography, viii, 179.

Daston Lorraine , “Historia: Explorations in the history of early modern empiricism”, Project: Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/DeptII_Da_Historia/index_html, accessed 8 April 2008.