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In the epidemic-related texts printed by Gdańsk publishing houses in the 16th and 17th centuries, we can also find prescriptions. Over time, they gave way to short tax notes on anti-epidemic drugs attached to official forms. Ten publications from 1564–1663 were analyzed, and by comparing their contents, a list of 47 prescriptions and 144 drug names was compiled. The significant difference in the number of prescriptions and drugs was linked to the specificity of the Gdańsk pharmacy market in that period. On the example of works by Bartholomaeus Wagner, Jacob Schadius, Valerius Fidler, Johann Mathesius and prints signed by official city physicians, the evolution of anti-epidemic publications in Gdańsk was characterized and compared with the Gdańsk taxes then in force. The publications by Bartholomaeus Calckreuter and Gerbrand Hajo were cited as a context.
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Clerical persons conducted a variety of botanical research in Poland and Polish lands. The purpose of this article is to describe their achievements in this field of science. No comprehensive study of the clergy’s contribution to the development of this branch of science has been made so far. The study is based on the biographies of botanists and amateur botanists from The Biographical Dictionary of Polish Botanists which is being prepared for publication. The Dictionary comprises 1,773 biographies, including 69 clerical persons. Among these 69 people, the largest group form Catholic priests (21), followed by Jesuits (12, including 1 ex-Jesuit), Protestant clergy (6), and Piarists (6, including 2 ex-Piarists). The fewest were archbishops and subdeacons (1 person each). Among the botanists active in Poland and Polish lands, no clergy of non-Christian denominations were identified. The share of clergy in the total number of botanists was not substantial. They were in the majority only during the period when medical botany flourished (from the mid-14th century to the last quarter of the 16th century). Among the many branches of botany, floristics was most often practiced by the clergy, with as many as 36 people publishing works in this field, followed by ecology (14 people), popularization of botany (7 people), and phycology (5 people). Other branches of botany were less frequently practiced: medical botany and systematics – by 4, ethnobotany, phytogeography, physiology, mycology, nature conservation, and paleobotany – by 3, history of botany and pteridology – by 2, and anatomy, bryology, cytology, dendrology, lichenology, morphology, botanical engraving – by 1 person. With the increase in the number of botanists and the rapid development of experimental-laboratory branches of botany, the importance of clergy in the development of plant science in Poland has started to decline.
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This article aims to analyze (from autopsy) mathematical motifs in the frontispieces to selected seventeenth-century Polish technical-military treatises (by Adam Freytag, Kazimierz Siemienowicz and Józef Naronowicz-Naroński). The frontispiece is considered here an iconographic source for the history of science and technology. The rationale for investigating this topic is the process of the progressive mathematization of technical knowledge in Europe in the 15th-18th centuries. It is the first study of this subject with regard to Polish technical-military writing. Only one other article is devoted to this issue (Delphine Schreuder, When Mars Meets Euclid. The Relationship between War and Mathematical Sciences in Frontispecies of Fortification Treatises, 2021), but it does not cover the works of Polish authors. There are also several general studies (mainly in art or architectural history) on frontispieces to fortification treaties (Armin Schlechter, Engraved Title Pages of Fortification Manuals, 2014, Jeroen Goudeau, Harnessed Heroes: Mars, the Title-page, and the Dutch Stadtholders, 2016). The analysis of the typographic compositions of the discussed frontispieces revealed three main motifs: 1. the connection between the art of war and mathematical knowledge, as far as the knowledge of fortification and artillery is concerned; 2. the degree to which those disciplines - both of which combine the practice of the battlefield with theory - were mathematicized; 3. the crucial importance of drafting and measuring instruments for these sciences. The article’s final section addresses the issue of the rhetorical and persuasive function of the frontispieces.
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Despite the enormous progress in the development of medical sciences in recent decades, surgery is still associated with manual dexterity. The oldest surgical procedures were performed primarily with the hands, and only later with the use of tools that came up as a result of the adaptation of everyday devices. Scientific and technological progress, along with the growing experience of surgeons, influenced the evolution of surgical instruments, which changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. As in other areas of human activity, the most useful surgical tools have constantly evolved and have survived to our times in a form reminiscent of their most ancient precursors. Others, which did not work in practice, today are a curiosity and a trace which allows us to follow the development of surgical thought in the past.
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Wojciech Orliński, Kopernik. Rewolucje, Wydawnictwo Agora, Warszawa 2022, ss. 434Piotr Łopuszański, Mikołaj Kopernik. Nowe oblicze geniusza, Wydawnictwo Fronda, Warszawa 2022, ss. 446Two new biographies: Kopernik. Rewolucje (Warszawa 2022) by Wojciech Orliński and Mikołaj Kopernik. Nowe oblicze geniusza (Warszawa 2022) by Piotr Łopuszański, along with this year’s 550th anniversary of the astronomer’s birth, have triggered the reflection on how to write about Copernicus’s life and work. The article discusses popular and scientific biography as a genre and narrative model in the history of science and scrutinizes the criteria of “good biographical stories”. The work recalls examples of biographical writing on Renaissance thinkers (Leonardo da Vinci and Girolamo Cardano) and the techniques the authors used to humanize their protagonists for modern readers. The second part of the article focuses on analyzing the new Copernican biographies, noting the authors’ presence in the text, narrative strategies, and their attitude to sources and existing historiography. The final remarks concern the possibility of unifying the polyphonic discourse in Copernican studies and sharing new research with a wider audience.
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The dominant purpose of this article is to clarify issues related to the genealogy and chronology of one of the branches of the Kakhetian Royal Bagrationi Dynasty, the princes Davitishvili (Ramazishvili/ Ramazashvili).In particular, the article sheds light on the inquiry of the origin of the princes Davitishvili and, at the beginning of the 17th century, the formation of their younger, lateral line - the princes Ramazishvili / Ramazashvili.In the historical sources of the XVII-XVIII centuries, they are conspicuous as Ramazishvili or Ramazashvili. Based on historical records and documents of the 17th century, it turns out that the ancestor of the line of princes Ramazishvili / Ramazashvili was Prince Ramaz, son of Georgi Davitishvili. His descendants now live in Georgia, the older line in Tbilisi and the younger line in Kakheti - in the village of Pshavela.The article provides a genealogical fragment of the princes Davitishvili and their offshoots of the princes Ramazishvili/Ramazashvili. The think piece also cites for the first time the charter of 1786 given by King Erekle II to Konstantin Ramazashvili.
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According to Blaise Pascal, “Cardinal Richelieu did not want to be guessed.” Indeed, when evaluating the life and work of Cardinal Richelieu, there is a difference of opinion among historians, one praising and glorifying him, while the other, on the contrary, takes a diametrically opposite position and considers Richelieu’s name only in a negative context. Reaching a consensus between them will not be an easy task and this dispute will probably last a long time and will not end. Therefore, we think, it will not be without interest to find out what the attitude of the Georgian scientist Dimitri Uznadze towards Cardinal Richelieu might have been. This issue has not been studied in this regard. This is a novelty, it has a Georgian context and it seems to be the first attempt to cover this issue.The coverage of Richelieu’s life and work in Georgia has its own history and covers a relatively larger section than it was thought during the Soviet years. This was a reality that, thanks to the efforts of the totalitarian Bolshevik regime, could not be seen by the general public. In 1918-1921, the interest in the life and work of Cardinal Richelieu in the Democratic Republic of Georgia acquired a popular scientific character and, above all, was reflected in the first national school textbooks of modern history. Against the background of the current Georgian reality, this was a serious step forward, and to keep it silent should not seem justified. It does not give us an adequate picture of this issue.Our main source on this issue is the first national textbook of “New History” by Dimitri Uznadze and Ivane Gvelesiani. No other more tangible material will be found. So we have to believe in what we have. The nihilistic attitude towards this information is inappropriate.We will try to find out two issues: 1. How informed were the authors of the textbook, Dimitri Uznadze and Ivane Gvelesiani, about the life and work of Richelieu. 2. How they valued the work of Cardinal Richelieu. It’s important to find out and make the cognitive load of this section of the textbook.From today’s point of view, it should not be advisable to judge their reasoning on this topic harshly, it would be an easy way to go and we find it hypercritical.Strict scientific criteria are not measurable here. They faced a much more modest task. This is a school textbook. It has a purely cognitive load. The authors of this cultural mission guide can not be misunderstood. The main thing, that’s it. The importance of their discussion on this topic, we think, should lie in this. This material would help the Georgian society, first of all, what kind of hair it needs, the student youth and would help to form a general idea about this issue. This minimum information was fully in line with the requirements of the textbook.The authors of the textbook, Dimitri Uznadze and Ivane Gvelesiani, should have seemed quite informed and had an insight into Richelieu’s activities. Underline its key moments. This, obviously, is not very good, it is not accidental and it appears as a logical result of empirical, factual, knowledge of the material. A positive assessment of Cardinal Richelieu’s work should be perfectly legitimate. Undoubtedly, it contains a rational grain of truth, and is another plus of their reasoning on this subject. They must have been well aware of the progressive historical significance of Richelieu’s work. This must have been due to two circumstances.The successes of Richelieu’s policies and the fact that they were well aware of the importance of the role of the individual in history. Further refinement of some issues, in our opinion, should not be ruled out, first of all we consider such a low assessment of the personality of Louis XIII. A sense of inadequacy was reflected in the coverage of Cardinal Richelieu’s foreign policy.
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The article is dedicated to the so-called “theory of conquest.” In the context of Old Polish literature (texts in Polish and Latin from the 16th and 17th centuries), this broad term refers to the belief that at the dawn of the nation’s history, the Sarmatian nobility invaded and subjugated the indigenous people, thus turning them into slaves (peasants). Such an alleged mythical narrative is sometimes equated with Sarmatism. The “theory of conquest” – in the eyes of many contemporary researchers and journalists – was to become the key exclusive myth of the civil elite, used by the nobility to justify its privileged position in the state. The author of the article argues that the claims of the popularity and even of the very existence of “conquest theory” in the indicated historical period are not supported by sufficient source evidence. Therefore, it should be considered rather as a problematic 20th-century interpretative framework or even a modern historiographic myth. Citing quotes from modern scientific literature, journalism, and popularizing texts, the author discusses the broad diffusion of the 20th-century “theory about the existence of theory.” By confronting the latter with source texts, she tries to prove its incompatibility with early modern discursive practices which were constructed to justify the erstwhile hierarchical social order. The article also tries to explain the origins and reasons for the popularity of the “theory of conquest” as an interpretative framework.
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This article considers the “Plague of Justinian” from the perspective of a person living for over a year in a situation of epidemiological threat, constantly “bombarded” in the media with a diversity of information relating to all aspects of the COVID 19 pandemic, including non-medical ones. The plague that erupted in the Byzantine Empire in the XVth year of the reign of the Emperor Justinian (541/542 CE) can certainly be seen as a pandemic. Between 541 and 750, one can note as many as eighteen waves of plague. From written records and on the basis of admittedly only partial archaeological data, we know that the plague affected the entire population of the Byzantine Empire, the barbarian kingdoms in the West, but also neighbouring lands: Ireland, Scandinavia, and Germany. IT very likely also reached lands to the east of the Oder. The article describes the causes and circumstances of the appearance of plague in the Byzantine Empire, its symptoms, its spread, ways of combatting it, and its consequences (including social and economic consequences). The article also attempts to estimate the number of victims of the epidemic in Byzantium.
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In all early-modern Europe, epidemics were a very frequent phenomenon. In the XVth and XVIth centuries, the one effective way of avoiding the danger of infection and near certain death was to flee from a place threatened by plague. In the XVth century, a quite short journey was often sufficient, or else monarchs decided right away on a distant journey to the less-populated Lithuania, attempting to turn this to use in terms of the system of using royal progresses as a way of exercising power. In the XVIth century, especially in the second half, only one move to even a distant locality was insufficient, and the king and members of his family were compelled to move to a succession of places. Kings and their families almost always spent a period of isolation on their own estates. There were exceptions when the ruler was able to enjoy the hospitality of magnate or church estates. Through the nearly two hundred years of Jagiellonian rule, there is only one case (in 1572) when one can see the incautious behavior of the court as contributing to spread of plague. Although in the XVth century one can still find traces of real fear of pestilence among the royals and dramatic descriptions of huge, often exaggerated, losses of population, in the next century an outbreak of plague is seen rather as a passing inconvenience in life, cause of bothersome confusions in the normal functioning of the state or of changes in the royal family’s plans.
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This article aims to analyze narrative material recorded in Prussian and Pommeranian towns in the course of an epidemic of syphilis and smallpox in 1527 and of English sweats in 1529 (chroniclers’ accounts and letters). The point of departure is the extensive and detailed description contained in the Preuβische Chronik by the Gdańsk chronicler Simon Grunau. To test its credibility, the information it contains is compared with other current accounts on the subject of the course of the epidemics. Hitherto the epidemics of 1527 and 1529 have not aroused the interest of scholars writing about Prussia and Pomerania. The author of this article has collected manuscripts and printed source material, which is included in an annex. The article analyzes: the reactions to the appearance of sickness on the part of city authorities noted by chroniclers (including, Simon Grunau, Thomas Kantzow, and Johannes von Freiberg) and of the inhabitants of Szczecin, Gdańsk, Königsberg, Toruń, and Elbląg; descriptions of the remedial measures proposed; and interpretations of the ways the sicknesses spread among people and domestic animals. The article compares these with accounts surviving in contemporary letters, including those of Martin Luther, Prussian Duke Albrecht Hohenzollern, and Philip Melanchthon; it also considers accounts from the extensive medical writing preserved in old printed texts. An analysis of the epidemic of 1527 makes it possible to identify several diseases (smallpox and bird flu) that chroniclers identify with syphilis. The surviving accounts of witnesses point to convergent reactions of people to new illnesses with those observed today.
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The plagues that appeared cyclically and with a relatively high frequency were for the urban communities of the Middle Ages and the early modern era an experience almost permanently inscribed in everyday life. As part of the struggle against epidemics, in addition to administrative measures taken by the authorities, there began to appear from the end of the XVth century anti-epidemic compendia edited by city physicians (thus medical persons with university education) and intended for a wider audience; they became especially popular in the German cultural area during the XVIth century. It was no different in Gdańsk (Danzig), wherea high level of medicine, and the practice of employing as city physicians well-educated medical persons (from German and Protestant universities) by the city authorities, resulted in the publication of numerous prints of this type. In total, in the years 1508−1588 in Gdańsk (Danzig) seven compendiums of this type were published. They contained general recommendations for protection against plague based on Galen’s medical system relating to the so-called six unnatural things (res non naturales); they were part of a trend of popular medical literature containing “rules of health” (regimen sanitatis). The recommendations contained in the prints by Gdańsk (Danzig) city physicians of the XVIth century concerned, therefore, the preservation of unpolluted air in the city, taking sanitary measures, proper diet and physical condition, as well as “surgical” treatments (taking baths in a bathhouse, using laxatives, phlebotomy), and pharmacological care (they were also supervisors of the city pharmacy at that time). These recommendations, however, were not practical advice (contrary to their titles) that could be fully applied in a time of plague; rather, they represented the state of academic medical knowledge of that time and were only a manifestation of its popularization resulting from the medical personnel’s duties. A separate place was found for considerations on a kind of “medical theology”, related to the commonly shared view that the cause of the epidemic was divine anger interpreted as a punishment for sins. This was of particular importance in the confessional order (with a Lutheran dominant) that was taking shape in Gdańsk (Danzig) during the XVIth century.
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This study is focused on the collection of bone spindle whorls found at the Tilkiyuk settlement mound near the village of Sadievo, southeastern Bulgaria. The twelve animal bone spindle whorls are dated to the second half of the Chalcolithic period in Bulgaria (4600/4550 – 4100/3800 BC). The objects are made of the caput femoris of large ruminant species, and only one is made of scapula. The lack of whorls with trapezoidal and conical cross-section among the Tilkiyuk archaeological finds, usually made of the most common raw material (clay), posed the question about the specific development of local textile production in the settlement. These types of whorls are made of animal bones (and possibly wood), while ceramic sherds were used for flat spindle whorls. Standardization is observed in the production of bone spindle whorls – the same raw material, the same technological methods, and the same preference for two specific shapes only. The Tilkiyuk inhabitants had very good knowledge of these implements and their production. The earliest appearance of bone spindle whorls could be associated with the Middle Chalcolithic period (Maritsa IV–Karanovo V culture), but their greatest prevalence in the Late Chalcolithic cultural complex of Kodzhadermen-Gumelnitsa-Karanovo VI is a very distinctive pattern that was established in many Chalcolithic sites in Bulgaria.
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The article deals with the integration and disintegration processes during the development of the Theban polis and the Boeotian League. It analyzes the natural factors for the development of Thebes into the largest centre of Boeotia, which include presence of fertile land, sufficient water, as well as a convenient geographical location at the crossroads of the main roads of Boeotia. These factors influenced the formation of the Theban settlement. The long-term development of the Boeotian communities was not exclusively increasing. Around 1200 BC, a complex of factors led to the collapse of palace-centric states and to regional disintegration. However, after some time, the presence of large water resources and the favourable location of Thebes as natural growth factors caused a new leap of development in the Late Geometric period (8th century BC) when Thebes again became an organized settlement and set on the path of polis development. These same growth factors led to the fact that Thebes turned into the largest policy of Boeotia. In the process of urban growth of Thebes, the religious and self-identifying components were of great importance. The first urban religious cluster to expand beyond the Acropolis of Thebes was the southeastern sector, which, in our opinion, was already walled in Late Antiquity. It was here that the most important city sanctuaries of Herakles and Apollo Ismenios were located. As soon as Thebes turned into the largest regional centre in the 6th century BC, the process of integrating the settlements of Boeotia into a federation under Theban hegemony began. This process was interrupted several times due to political factors, which resulted in the defeat of Thebes by the Persians in 479 BC, or, for example, in the disintegration of the Boeotian League as a result of the Peace of Antalcidas in 387/6 BC, and then the capture of Thebes by the Spartans in 382 BC. In the periods we are considering, the final phases of the Boeotian League’s disintegration under the Theban hegemony were the events of 338 and 335 BC. The final part of the article proposes an explanation of these processes through an Annalist perspective.
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The article examines two of the first projects about reforming Russian absolutism – the ones by Nikita Panin and Mikhail Speransky. The popular one in Bulgarian historiography dates back to the beginning of the 19th century. For this reason, more attention has been paid to the project from the end of the 18th century. The detailed tracing of the ideas in the two programmes primarily shows the existence of differences and specificity between them rather than continuity and similarity.
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On the basis of research on publications and authentic documents, this article argues that the leftist ideology in Iran was introduced in the course of the systematic development of communist imperialism. It traces the historical development of the Tudeh Party as the most representative manifestation of this ideology. The author demonstrates that the relative paucity of communist ideas and actions in Iran is due to the decidedly narrow segment of society that engages with them, and to the sharp contradiction of atheistic communism to the Islamic basis of the everyday life of the majority who would engage with these ideas. The author puts emphasis on their decisive role in the survival of the Tudeh Party and on their influence on the Bolsheviks, and later on the All-Union Communist Party (b) – the KPSS and the Comintern.
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This study examines the sources Miloš Sovák’s socialist defectology drew on. Sovák’s concept of defectology, published in 1953, was based on the doctrine of I. P. Pavlov, but at the same time resembled the teachings of the French physician and philosopher Georges Canguilhem on the “normal” and the “pathological”. The paper argues that at the roots of Sovák’s theory, politically relevant to the Czechoslovak revolutionary utopia of the 1950s, and thus accommodating the values and demands of the Czechoslovak communist dictatorship, lies the holistic and anti-mechanistic professional interest in and thinking about the individual/organism relationship and its totality, characteristic of the first years and decades of the 20th century.
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This paper explores how attachment theory was adapted and further developed in socialist Czechoslovakia. It analyses the scientific discussions and the influence of the theory on state care policies, especially in residential childcare.
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The paper traces the genesis and development of post-Stalinist Marxist eschatology, particularly in relation to its tendency to capture and describe aspects of extra-sensory, metaphysical and parapsychological experience. With its subject defined this way, the paper seeks to chart a continuity between the reformist period of “post-Stalinist” philosophy and the period of Czechoslovak normalization. It aims to highlight some lesser-known aspects of 20th-century Marxist utopianism within the broader context of the intellectual history of Marxism.
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