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Along the Path

Updates as we learned about Lawson's journey and times -- and reports from the trail as we progressed along it. Plus tales of the process of publishing the result.

A New Voyage to Albion, III: The Apothecary

5/18/2015

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PictureThe intersection of Long Lane and Aldersgate Streets doesn't quite radiate historic charm. Oh well.
James Petiver, the man to whom Lawson sent his botanical specimens from Carolina, was an apothecary -- what we would call a pharmacist but was actually in the early 1700s some combination of a pharmacist, a doctor, a scientist, and a museum director. 

Hans Sloane, whose collection founded the British Museum, was a physician who had apprenticed as an apothecary. Petiver, who had dozens of corresponding collectors and whose contribution made up more than a third of Sloane's final collection, was an apothecary, "at the White Cross, near Long Lane in Aldersgate Street." The apothecary was where people went for help with their health, for information on their world. 

You may have already sort of known this, but once you start following the flow of information -- and botanical specimens -- in the old days, it amazes you. I went to the Natural History Museum to see the results of the flow of information through Petiver and Sloane's apothecary habits, and I went to Long Lane and Aldersgate Street in London to see where Petiver's apothecary once stood. It's a pretty boring intersection now. 

On the other hand, I also traveled to the Chelsea Physic Garden, right on the banks of the Thames. There I found myself in a place I would never have known of had I not traced up from Lawson to Petiver and Sloane. Founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, the Chelsea Physic Garden is, besides  the Oxford Botanical Garden, founded in 1621, the oldest botanical garden in England. Its guide describes it as "at its peak, during the 1700s, the most important centre for plant exchange on the planet."

So, kinda cool place.

Picture
Sir Hans Sloane surveys the Chelsea Physic Garden, where he apprenticed and began the lifelong passion for collecting and scientific observation that culminated in the founding of the British Museum. As the passage from Shakespeare below demonstrates, apothecaries were known for their interest in all things scientific, not merely the medicinal plants that formed the greater part of medicine in the 1600s and 1700s.
Picture
A map of the Chelsea Physic Garden from 1751.
I do remember an apothecary,— 
And hereabouts he dwells,—which late I noted 
In tatter'd weeds, with overwhelming brows, 
Culling of simples; meager were his looks, 
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones; 
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung, 
An alligator stuff'd, and other skins 
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves 
A beggarly account of empty boxes, 
Green earthen pots, bladders and musty seeds, 
Remnants of packthread and old cakes of roses, 
Were thinly scatter'd, to make up a show. 

                                               -- Romeo and Juliet, V, i, 37-48.
Picture
Lawson Trek youngsters Louie and Gus examine Fortune's Tank, a pond that not only houses aquatic plants but provides breeding space for damsel flies, dragonflies, and plenty of tadpoles.
Spread out over four acres along the Thames, the garden not only grew where gardens and markets had flourished since the time of Henry VIII but offered easy access to the river, the safest and most convenient way for the Apothecaries to travel, receive specimens from all over the world, and to store "the gaily painted barge they used for royal pageants for their celebrated 'herborising' expeditions," according to the Garden's own history. It struggled in its early decades but in 1712 was purchased, along with the nearby Manor of Chelsea, by Sloane (I'll explain how he got the money later), which explains why you come to the garden down Lower Sloane Street, from the Sloane Square tube station. 

The garden contains sections dedicated to medicinal plants, useful plants, and the oldest rock garden in Europe. Signs and guides provide explanations of the uses of such plants as hyssop (helps the ears) and goldenrod (helps pass bladder stones), and descriptions of the first herbal guides, published in the 1500s. A statue of Sloane stands at the center, but you follow paths and lawns to history beds (showing off species collected by famous head gardeners) and systematic order beds. There are some of Europe's first greenhouses, too, as well -- of course -- as a place to have tea.

As delightful as the garden was, though, it helped tie together the stories of Lawson, Petiver, and Sloane. That is, consider the lines at left from Shakespeare, painting an apothecary in his mysterious lair full of animal skins; add in special access to this sort of secret garden; then add in the statue, the correspondence, and the books full of pressed flowers and jars full of faunal specimens preserved in spirits I saw at the Natural History Museum. Put them together and could you even think of a cooler job? Apothecaries were scientists and arcanists, naturalists and archivists, physicians and medical researchers. They worked in libraries full of leather books and laboratories full of beakers and decoctions and freaky stuff preserved in spirits. And when as Europe explored the world anybody found anything sufficiently weird, the explorer sent it back to the apothecaries. 
In what way does this not describe the coolest job in history? 

Sloane's own story makes the case. Well-enough known to enlightenment luminaries like philosopher John Locke and naturalist John Ray to be a member of the Royal Society in 1685, Sloane traveled to Jamaica as a court physician; while there he encountered a local combination of water and chocolate that he called "nauseaous." An apothecary doesn't leave poor enough alone. He discovered that by adding milk he made the beverage delightful and thereby created what we call hot chocolate, which took England by storm. (ADDITION, 7-13-15: I am told by an extremely reliable source that this story is regarded by those who know things as apocryphal. Sloane made his money by marrying a sugar widow and by being a doctor. Who knew?)
Picture
Sloane had an illustrator follow him around in Jamaica. Nice work if you can get it. These engravings were made by another artist after Sloane's return, using the actual specimens Sloane brought back, not the (few) drawings made by the illustrator, who seems to have been both lucky and lazy.
PictureSpecimens in jars on display in the Darwin Centre of the Natural History Museum. Images used by permission of the Natural History Museum.
His profits funded his continued collection. (Long after his death a chocolatier took possession of his milk chocolate recipe and also did rather well with it. You may have heard of Cadbury's.) His home became famous among collectors.

Sloane wrote up his travels in Jamaica, in a 1696 catalog and a richly illustrated full Natural History published in 1707 and 1725.

But again -- that whole notion of collecting, of bringing to you the wonders of the age, of learning and displaying the secrets of nature, was the big takeaway for me. Sloane's house was visited as something of an invitation-only museum in his lifetime, and some of those specimens remain on display in the Darwin Centre at the Natural History Museum, spookily floating in jars. 

And I couldn't help noticing that we've retained that adoration of the apothecary as a place of mystery and wonder as I visited the rest of London. If you go to the Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour (and you should!), you'll get to walk down the original set for the famous Diagon Alley. And there, among the quidditch shops and wand shops, among all the fancy and wonder, you'll find two examples of only one kind of business: Apothecaries, with Mr. Mulpepper competing -- right next door! -- with Slug & Jiggers, both with windows full of jars, potions, and specimens that could have come right from the Darwin Centre. We went to the Museum of London as well (also recommended!), where the Victorian Walk allows you to wander a London street from the late nineteenth century. 

Yep. Apothecary. Turns out that once stuff is cool, it just stays cool. Ancient specimens, animals in spirit, a garden full of the plants of the world -- and hot chocolate.

Lawson was onto something.

Picture
Two apothecaries on Diagon Alley! One presumes wizards and witches, intrinsically cool, provided plenty of custom.
Picture
VIctorians loved their bottles and infusions too.
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A New Voyage to Albion, II: Specimens

5/18/2015

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We have a letter, in the British Library, from Lawson to James Petiver from October 1710: "I have sent a small box of Collections ...," he says; "I hope they are come safe to you." He notes he has more specimens collected, "but of books being not full I omitt sending them untill compleated." In July of 1711 he sent another letter, hoping that "long since you have Received ye Collection of plants & Insects in 4 vials wch I sent for you." Which is the last we hear from Lawson, being as he is killed by the Tuscarora less than two months later.

So -- off I went to England, to see the specimens that Lawson left behind.
Picture
Charlie Jarvis in the Darwin Center, having pulled out the original books of the Hans Sloane collection that include Lawson's contributions through Petiver.
I arrived at the Natural History Museum to meet with Charlie Jarvis, a historical botanist who does research into the original collections of Hans Sloane and James Petiver, among others. Jarvis took me up an elevator to the top of the spectacular Darwin Center, the building that elegantly houses and preserves the original collections that formed the British Museum, from which the Natural History Museum eventually spun off. The plants are kept in volumes of books organized by HS numbers (Jarvis says HS stands for hortus siccus, or "dry garden" -- think horticulture and desiccated, for root words; not, as some would have it, for Hans Sloane or Herbarium Sloane). There are 265 of these volumes, of which four contained enough Lawson material to be worth bringing out. They reclined, open, on those foam cushions archives always use for books they want to treat nicely.
Picture
Each HS volume of the original Hans Sloane collection resides in its own sealed shelf compartment.
Lawson's specimens are wonderful to behold: dried, labeled, and all but perfect in their expression of humankind's desire to capture, to organize, to understand. In some cases Lawson's original notes are attached to the pages; in others only Petiver's  notes remain, but in all cases the pages are themselves 
Picture
This portion of the Darwin Center is thought of as a cocoon -- a hard outer covering protecting something precious within. For animal specimens kept in spirits it enables the museum to keep the temperature below the flash points for those liquids, and the cool air (15 C) keeps down pests that like to eat the plant specimens or the paper of the volumes in which they're bound. The books were deep-frozen (-30 C!) for 48 hours before being first brought into the center.
something like works of art, and just being near them reminded me of the audacity of not just Lawson's journey but of the undertaking it represented. The old civilizations of Europe had discovered a new world at the very same time emerging Enlightenment scientific sensibilities gave them the very tools they needed to begin understanding the world better than ever before. Ray's Historia Plantarum was between volumes 2 and 3 of its publication; it was Ray who established the "species as the ultimate unit of taxonomy." (Petiver helped in that endeavor by publishing illustrated works in the 17-teens.) Sloane's collection was the greatest of its time, perhaps ever; the work of Linnaeus, establishing the naming conventions we use even today, was decades in the future, and he used Sloane's collection when he did it.

Lawson's specimens (300 or so) are just a tiny portion of the collection -- Sloane had more than 300 named collectors, though some of this is just a specimen here or there from a traveling physician or clergyman. Petiver's collections constitute more than 100 of the volumes in Sloane's collection, and Petiver himself had dozens of correspondents. 
Picture
The celebrated snake root! Supposedly cures snakebite. Does no such thing.
He called Lawson "a very curious person" after the two met in London in the summer of 1709, probably at Petiver's shop, "at the sign of the White Cross in Aldersgate Street, London." That sign would have been "near Long Lane," so I had to visit the intersection. It's a couple of office buildings now. 

But the highlight of course was Lawson's specimens. He included "the celebrated snake root," which supposedly cured snakebite. It doesn't. A recent article in the digital journal Phytoneuron very thoroughly describes Lawson's specimens, connecting them to their current latin names, though some remain uncertain. Most important to me, though, was just to be near Lawson's plants -- to know they were gathered by his hand, labeled with his ink, and survived the centuries because people believe it's worth trying to understand this world around us. I also could not help noting that, like all wonderfully useful things, the pages were absolutely lovely. 
There's lots more to say about what I found in London pertaining to Lawson, Petiver, and so forth. More tomorrow!

All images used by permission of the Natural History Museum.
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