#CollectionsCaptured
Door No. 15
Illustration of Grainger Street, Newcastle upon Tyne (Local Illustrations, 030 ILL)
This illustration depicts Grainger Street during the 19th century, showing the hustle and bustle of central Newcastle with horse pulling carriages, looking down towards Grey’s Monument.
Find out more about our Local Illustrations.
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Door No. 12
Reproduction print depicting Duke Orsino first seeing Olivia, from ‘Shakespeare’s Comedy of Twelfth Night or what you will’ (Rare Books, RB822.33 SHA)
The reproduction illustration by W. Heath Robinson is from Act I, Scene I; ‘DUKE. O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first’
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is reference to the twelfth night after Christmas Day (6th January). This is called the Eve of the Feast of Epiphany and prior to Shakespeare’s play, had become a day of revelry. Servants often dressed up as their masters, women dressed as men and men as women, and so forth. This Carnivalesque reversal is the basis of the play’s gender confusion-driven plot.
Twelfth Night is a Shakespearean comedy of mistaken identity. Twins, Viola and Sebastian, who are separated in a shipwreck. Viola fears Sebastian is dead and disguises herself as a boy, calls herself Cesario, and takes up service with Duke Orsino, falls in love but can’t do anything about it due to her disguise. Orsino falls in love with a girl called Olivia but rejects him. Orsino sends Viola (Cesario) to Olivia to try and win her round, but Olivia falls in love with Cesario. Meanwhile Olivia’s steward, Malvolio, is trying to keep order in the house but her uncle Sir Toby Belch and his friends have other ideas. They convince Malvolio that Olivia is in love with him and make him look extremely foolish – Olivia thinks her servant has actually gone mad. When she sees Sebastian, who has survived the shipwreck, she naturally thinks he is Cesario and promptly marries him. Orsino is furious when he finds out but once Viola and Sebastian meet and reveal their true identities there is a happy ending – for everyone but poor Malvolio.
Find out more about the Rare Books Collection.
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Door No. 9
Letter describing the outbreak of Cholera in Gateshead, 1832 from ‘Collection relative to the cholera at Gateshead, in the county of Durham Vol I (Rare Books, RB 616.932 BEL)
This letter is contained within the first of two scrapbook volumes containing information about the outbreak of cholera in Gateshead in 1831-2. It was written on Boxing Day, 26th December 1831. It details that Cholera had broken out in Gateshead, with the death of 6 persons in Beggars entry, 2 in Hillgate, 1 in Jacksons Chair and several more falling ill in Gateshead.
Cholera is a bacterial infection caused by contaminated water or food, but at the time of this outbreak people didn’t know that! Throughout the 1831-2 outbreak, no cure was found, nor would it be until the English physician, John Snow, proved that it was a water borne disease caused by infected water during an 1854 Cholera outbreak in London.
Find out more about our Cholera scrapbooks here.
The scrapbooks are part of the Rare Books Collections. Find out more about it here.
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Door No. 7
From the Pybus (Professor Frederick) Archive, FP/3/1/7
Written during World War Two, this Christmas card was sent from Major Saviour of the 53 General Hospital, a Royal Army Medical Corps hospital which formed part of the Middle East Land Forces.
The recipient was Frederick Charles Pybus, Professor of surgery at Newcastle Medical School. Major Saviour congratulate Pybus on his appointment and chair. In addition to Pybus’ research into surgical methods and the causes of Cancer, he also amassed the internationally important Pybus Collection. The collection consists of around 2000 books on aspects of medical history, spanning nearly 700 years.
Find out more about the Pybus (Professor Frederick) Collection.
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Door No. 5
To make Snow Cream recipe from Jane Loraine’s recipe book (Miscellaneous Manuscript, Misc MSS 5)
Fancy making ‘Snow Cream’ the 17th Century way. Well, here’s how;
Take thick cream of the evening milk put to it a little sugar and some rose water, then put it into silver basin or a wooden bowl and with a little rod make a little brush and beat it with good strength and as you see it rising to froth put it with the rod into the other side of the bowl from the plate where you beat it and when you have a good deal made into froth take it up with a skimmer and as fast as you lay it into your cream bowls throw searced double refined sugar upon it, and when you have taken up as much froth as you have that made, that fall to beats in your cream again so do till you have made your dish of cream as big as you will have it that is done
This recipe is part of a larger recipe book that was created by a number of people including the manuscript’s owner, Jane Loraine. The recipes are culinary, medicinal and cosmetic. The manuscript is an excellent example of the kinds of knowledge and expertise that women in an early modern household needed during the 17th Century.
Find out more about Jane Lorraine’s recipe book here and find more recipes from the Jane Lorraine Recipe book in this digital edition.
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Door No. 4
Postcard from Katharine Trevelyan (CPT Uncat 62/19
This postcard was written to Kitty [Katharine] Trevelyan, daughter of Charles Philips and Lady Mary Trevelyan of Wallington, when she was four years old. The card sends Christmas greetings and is signed ‘Edie’. It was written at the Victoria Home for Invalid Children in Margate.
The Trevelyan family were a wealthy and important family who lived at Wallington Hall in Northumberland during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They played an important role in politics, culture and education.
The card was published by the German company of E. A. Schwerdtfeger & Co. Information on the reverse reveals that this particular card was ‘imperfect’ – likely relating to the slight misalignment of the print leaving a thin white band at the top, and some of the information missing at the bottom.
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Door No. 3
Article titled ‘Stealing the Christmas Spirit’ from 5th December 1985 edition of The Courier
Anyone see the pun here? Wonder if he was ever caught?
From 5th December 1985 issue of the Courier. View the full issue here.
Find other issues from the Courier Archive online.
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Door No. 2
The Turtle Dove from ‘History of British Birds Vol I (Bradshaw-Bewick Collection, Bradshaw-Bewick 761BEW)
On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
Two Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree
THE TURTLE DOVE
“…The female lays two eggs, and has only one brood in this country, but in warmer climates it is supposed to breed several times in the year.”
Extract from History of British Birds Vol I., page 273, by Thomas Bewick.
History of British Birds is published in two volumes. It was the first field guide for non-specialists and contains accurate illustrations of bird species. Aspects from the History of British Birds is used in poetry and literature.
Find out more about the Bradshaw-Bewick collection.
The Special Collections team have been busy looking through their archive and rare book collections to uncover unique Christmas Treasures for the return of the Special Collections #ChristmasCountdown advent calendar.
Starting on Friday 1st December 2017, join the team in counting down the days to Christmas. Explore our unique collections by opening a new door each day to reveal a Christmas Treasure.
Click on the calendar above to take you through to our Christmas Countdown 2017 advent calendar. Be sure to visit each day throughout December in the run up to Christmas to uncover a new image.
Once you’ve opened the door for that day, why not look through the previous days and see what you can find.
Why not follow @ncllibspeccoll on Twitter to keep up-to-date with Special Collections’ #ChristmasCountdown.
For many of us, autumn is synonymous with falling leaves, darker nights, and wrapping up in warmer clothes. It’s a time when the clocks go back, and we can enjoy the last of the sunny days before winter sets in. However, in the Eighteenth Century, autumn was also synonymous with something altogether less pleasant: ‘autumnal dysentery’.
Dysentery was common in Newcastle and wider Tyneside during the Eighteenth Century, but reached epidemic levels during the autumns of 1758 and 1759. There were also significant outbreaks in 1783 and 1785.
Andrew Wilson (1718-1792) was a Scottish physician and medical writer, who studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and graduated in 1749. He set up a practice in Newcastle a short time after and stayed in the city until 1775 or 1776, when he moved to London.
Wilson was in Newcastle during the 1758 outbreak, and ‘the conceptions that I then formed of the nature and genius of the Autumnal Bloody Flux, and of the true indications of cure to be adhered to in it’ (pp.1-2), he put into his Essay. The Essay was first published in 1760. The second edition that we have in Special Collections was published in 1777. Considering Wilson’s Edinburgh connections, it is unsurprising that he dedicated the tract to Dr John Rutherford, Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh, ‘my respected Master, my Patron, and my Friend’.
Title page from ‘An Essay on the Autumnal Dysentery’ (Medical Collection, Med Coll 616.935 WIL)
Wilson went into considerable detail discussing the causes, symptoms, and treatment of patients with dysentery. He offered a fairly gory description of the symptoms, which may not be suitable for those of squeamish dispositions…:
‘This disease is called the Bloody Flux, because more or less blood is generally, tho’ not always, mixed with the slimy fetid stools which are discharged during the course of it. The bloody discharge may be attributed to different causes, according to the degree, malignancy and continuance of the disease; such as, the vehemence of the inflammation, stretching the vessels opening into the cavity of the intestines, and straining red blood thro’ them, which does not naturally pass that length undissolved; the acrimony of the humours which are discharged into these guts during the inflammation, fretting and corroding the blood vessels…’ (pp2.3)
Page 2 from ‘An Essay on the Autumnal Dysentery’ describing the symptoms of the disease
Page 4 from ‘An Essay on the Autumnal Dysentry’ describing the time of year that dysentery spread
Wilson also mentioned how ‘This disease, like all epidemics, is… more frequent in cities and towns than in the country; among the feeble than among the strong…’ He also claimed that dysentery was ‘more frequent among the poor and labourers, than among the wealthy, and those who live better and pay more attention to their health’. As for the reason for this, he suggested that ‘indigence, but much more especially negligence in the article of cooling after heats by labour, exercise etc., exposes the lower class of people prodigiously to this and many other diseases’. (p.28)
Page 31 from ‘An Essay on the Autumnal Dysentry’ describing the signs of danger when treating patients
The second edition of the Essay, there is also the hint of medical controversy. In the ‘Introductory Discourse’ (which was new to the second edition), Wilson mentioned some of the recent publications on dysentery since his work was first published. Of particular interest to Wilson was a study by the Swiss physician Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, titled A Treatise on the Dysentery. Zimmerman had been made Physician in Ordinary in Hanover to George III in 1768.
First iii of the ‘Introductory Discourse’
Zimmermann’s book was of such interest to Wilson because, in the course of reading it, he ‘discovered that he had made use of my Essay, and totally supressed his knowledge of it, while he was very profuse in his references to every other latter English writer on the subject’. Wilson argued that he ‘would be sorry to mention this circumstance upon presumptive evidence only, but he has extracted a pretty long case verbatim from my Essay, which was to be found nowhere else…’ Wilson found this ‘a very strange way… of extracting from a writer upon the very subject he was treating of, while he was, almost in every page, citing other authors who had written in English as I had done…’ However, drawing back from a full accusation of plagiarism (perhaps because of Zimmerman’s relationship with George III), Wilson left the question open, and stated: ‘I make no remarks upon it’. (p.V)
Title page from Zimmerman’s ‘A Treatise on the Dysentery’ (Medical Collection, Med Coll 616.935 ZIM)
Newcastle University’s Special Collections have both Wilson’s and Zimmerman’s books here in Special Collections. Reading them and deciding whether there has been any wrongdoing might be a nice way to spend a dark autumn day, but only if you’ve got the stomach for it.
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Item references
Andrew Wilson, An Essay on the Autumnal Dysentery (1777) (Medical Collection, Med Coll 616.935 WIL)
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann, A Treatise on the Dysentery: with a description of the epidemic dysentery that happened in Switzerland in the year 1765 (1771) (Medical Collection, Med Coll 616.935 ZIM).