JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 525
In a continuing series on the History of Dots I'd like to add the following, disconnected though they are, so I don't lose them in the coming mix. It is also one of my few chances to actually need to use the word "scrofula"--a lonely, ugly word, a word as unpretty as "Susquehanna" is pretty, a word that should be as timid, but isn't, a word that really exercises all parts of your mouth when you say it out loud. (Try it--there's like five or six movements involved in getting that past your lips.)
To be truthful about it, it isn't so much about scrofula as it is about the "curing " of the disease with special little pills: the Popular Pill! This woodcut appears in a short sales treatise, published in London in 1675 or so, by Humphrey Nendick, (the delightfully titled) A Compendium of the Operations Vertues and Use of Dr. Nendicks Applauded Pill, against all Chronick Diseases,m curing by the cleansing of the blood, That most successful medicine, which is so deservedly called, the Popular Pill. For its Spcial vertues, safety and success, against the Dangerous and our Nations Popular Disease, the Scurvy. I'm not so sure about what
Dr. Nendick was up to with the pill, but I do know that is was obtainable from grocers, bakers, cutlers, gunsmiths and barbers all over England at three shillings for forty tiny dots of possible joy. Its imaginary Galenical powers were supposed to bear against the tedium and insolence of all manners of scurvies and popular complaints--much like its contemporary dot/pill rivals like Pilulae Anti-Scurbuticae (sold at the Carv'd Posts in Stonecutter Street between Shoe Lane and Fleet Ditch (!)).
Albrecht Durer doesn't seem to have many dots at all in his works, though I did stumble upon this image from Sebastan Brant's Navis Stultifera (Basle, 1497)--a fool interrupting a mother and daughter who were "discussing" their game of backgammon.
On the other hand the history of the construction of the periodic table is necessarily filled with dots, as we see with the monarchical creation of John Dalton (1766-1844), in his New System of Chemical Philosophy (part II), and which was printed in 1810--these symbols were sued to visually represent the atomic structure of compounds, and were of vast importance and predictive powers, marking the true modernizing of chemistry. It was in Part I of this work that Dalton first applied atomic theory to chemistry.
This last element for this installment on dots simplifies things enormously, sort of, even though these dots represent the very building blocks of almost everything else. They represent counting. And they are beautifully present in this image from Franz Brauner's Rechenbuch fuer osterreichische Volksschulen (published in 1953). Funny that this "Rechenbuch" turns up again here in 1953--its been the major part of titles of books describing the laws of arithmetic for 450 years.
When I read the headline, I thought, "I shall say something funny about scrofula," by which I meant the word, not the affliction. But you have claimed the wit in that turf already. At least scrofula, as an awful word, names an awful thing. Another word that bothers me is "marginalia." It strikes me as medical, or sexual, or both, and fails to the live up to the thing it names (although much if not most marginalia seems pointless or incomprehensible; however, enough of it is brilliant and beautiful to enoble the entire species.) Yes, I fully recognize that this post qualifies as modern marginalia.
Posted by: Jeff | February 26, 2009 at 10:39 AM
I am surprised at the paucity of dots in Durer--I thought, when I read your post, that surely there must be stippling or something dotty in those etchings, but no, he went in for little lines as far as I can tell from looking hard at a few online images.
Can't wait until you get into pointillism.
Posted by: Joy | February 26, 2009 at 10:52 AM
"Rose moles all in stipple upon trout that swim / Fresh fire-coal chestnut-falls ..."
Posted by: Jeff | February 26, 2009 at 06:30 PM
Jeff. Yes, indeedy. Sometimes I think it is nothing but marginalia, which, on its freckled face, ain't so stinking bad. I side with Poe and M. Teste. BTW, are you sure that your modern marginalia isn't really a gloss?
Posted by: John Ptak | February 26, 2009 at 08:44 PM
Joy! I think Durer was a line man, not so much for dots. Maybe it was the medium. After all, doesn't "Durer" mean "I don't *do* dots" in German? Well, maybe not. And I really don't know what to do about pointilism yet...something about seeing it from the side, like a cross section, sumpin' sumpin'.
Posted by: John Ptak | February 26, 2009 at 08:48 PM
Poe and Teste? Oh, dear. All I see with those names are Valery and Borges and ... oh, dear. I have some reading to do. And it's such a nice day. Maybe later.
Posted by: Jeff | February 27, 2009 at 10:10 AM
How lovely that Jeff thinks of Hopkins, one of England's weirdest and most wonderful poets. You are right, he was into the dot thing big time...
Posted by: Joy | February 27, 2009 at 09:30 PM
Joy: that's because Jeff is a lovely man, really. I know almost nothing of Hopkins except who he was--I'll be reading him tonight. Thanks!
Posted by: John Ptak | February 27, 2009 at 11:16 PM