The Seeds of Life
Page 27
Isaac Newton did not know: Home, “Force, Electricity, and the Powers of Living Matter,” 112.
they were parasites: Gasking, Investigations, 51.
the scientists’ “cold philosophy”: “Do not all charms fly / At the mere touch of cold philosophy?” Keats had written, in Lamia, in 1820.
“Perhaps it is not surprising” [FN]: Montesquieu, Persian Letters, no. 59. Online at http://tinyurl.com/hw2d8bo.
God “took delight to hide his works”: William Thomas Smedley, The Mystery of Francis Bacon (London: Robert Banks, 1912), 104.
“262 groundless hypotheses”: Jocelyn Holland, German Romanticism and Science: The Procreative Poetics of Goethe, Novalis, and Ritter (New York: Routledge, 2009), 5.
CHAPTER TWO: HIDDEN IN DEEP NIGHT
prom dresses, jealousy, chamber music?”: Robert Krulwich pondered “the Hard Problem” and quoted Diane Ackerman in an NPR essay called “Building Me: A Puzzlement.” The Ackerman passage is from her The Moon by Whale Light (New York: Random House, 1991), 131. Krulwich’s essay is online at http://tinyurl.com/hjys4br.
Aeschylus had spelled it out: The passage (italics in original) is from The Eumenides, lines 666–671. This translation is from The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides by Aeschylus, translated by Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin Classics, 1984).
“The woman hath a womb: Helkiah Crooke, Microcosmographia, quoted in Aughterson, ed., Renaissance Woman, 55.
Nature, lamented William Harvey: Keynes, Harvey, 337.
An egg outweighs the sperm: Diamond, Why Is Sex Fun? 21.
But not altogether impossible [FN]: Wright, Harvey, 125–126.
“You might be stopped by your disgust”: Quoted in Jones, The Lost Battles, 4.
“Who would have solicited: De Graaf, Reproductive Organs, 49.
Scientists today [FN]: Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 99.
oddly packaged counterweights: Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, Book I, section 4. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jsjqwmp.
menstrual blood soured wine: Bainbridge, Making Babies, 77.
two heads and four arms: Moore cites these questions in Science, 236.
females as “mutilated males.”: Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, Book II, section 3. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jsjqwmp.
William Harvey’s confidence: Wright, Harvey, 173.
Scholars debated why God [FN]: Marjorie Hope Nicolson, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 59–62 and 88–91.
“What was God trying: Pinto-Correia, The Ovary of Eve, 14.
“nothing was certain: Roger, Life Sciences, 38.
CHAPTER THREE: SWALLOWING STONES AND DRINKING DEW
In the ancient world [FN]: Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, 5.
sunlight, moonlight, rainbows: The examples in this paragraph and the next come from Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1955), 391–395. Online at http://tinyurl.com/h4ou9ad.
(The advice came from Pliny: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, vol. 29, chap. 27. Online at http://tinyurl.com/hf8vnjq.
“feces of crocodile: Riddle, Contraception and Abortion, 66. Riddle also discusses elephant-dung suppositories.
“Take dandruff from the scalp: Manniche, Sexual Life in Ancient Egypt, 104.
“fond of nocturnal Embraces,”: The Works of Aristotle, In Four Parts (London, 1777), 26. Online at Google books.
The Masterpiece tended to the vague: The examples in this sentence are from Works of Aristotle, 27.
Woodcuts showed such “monsters”: Works of Aristotle, 68.
“Subtle Lechers! Knowing that: The book-length poem was called “Kick Him Jenny” and was published in 1735.
“Dwarfs, Cripples, Hunch-backed: Nicolas Venette, Conjugal Love Reveal’d, quoted in McLaren, Reproductive Rituals, 45.
“When the woman is on top: Both quotations in this sentence come from Flandrin, Sex in the Western World, 120.
the Trobrianders remained “entirely ignorant”: Malinowski, “Baloma,” 220. Malinowski’s discussion of the Trobrianders’ theory of conception is in Chap. 7, with occasional remarks in Chaps. 1, 2, 3, 6. Online at http://tinyurl.com/z2vxxuq.
anthropologists have fought: See, for instance, Arguments About Aborigines by Lester Richard Hiatt.
“gave birth to their spouses: Inhorn, Quest for Conception, 54.
“I created on my own: Ibid., 55.
A second papyrus depicts: Ibid. The full papyrus in the British Museum can be viewed online at http://tinyurl.com/zhun748.
“the !Kung believe: Lorna Marshall, Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites (Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Press, 1999), 117.
“as rennet acts upon milk”: Aristotle, On Generation, Book II, part 4. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jsjqwmp.
the modern-day Basques: Marten Stol, Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting (Groningen, Netherlands: Styx, 2000), 15.
the Bantu of southern Africa: Albert I. Baumgarten, ed., Self, Soul, and Body in Religious Experience (Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1998), 12.
“The father provides the white seed: Kottek, “Embryology.” Kottek cites similar ideas in ancient Hindu works.
The historian (and embryologist) Joseph Needham: Needham, Embryology, 26.
“putting captured males to death: Ibid.
“If you plant wheat: Carol Delaney, “The Meaning of Paternity and the Virgin Birth Debate,” Man, New Series 21, no. 3 (Sept. 1986): 497.
“Here in Egypt: Inhorn, Quest for Conception, 70.
“Many of my New Guinea friends: Diamond, Why Is Sex Fun?, 65.
somewhat like a snowball: Beckerman and Valentine, eds., Partible Paternity, 10.
So demanding is this task: Ibid.
“a good mother will make a point: Yuval Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (New York: Harper, 2015), 39.
The Talmud even spelled out: Leo Auerbach, The Babylonian Talmud in Selection (New York: Philosophical Library, 1944), 162. Online at http://tinyurl.com/j7e6jbv.
“Shameful kissing and touching”: Flandrin, Sex in the Western World, 123, and Laqueur, Solitary Sex, 138 and 153–154.
“Adulterous is also the man: Flandrin, Sex in the Western World, 4.
The view was a long time [FN]: Alice Morse Earle, The Sabbath in Puritan New England (New York: Scribner’s, 1896), 247. Online at http://tinyurl.com/hevxkvq.
Questions that seem ludicrous: Stephen Jay Gould looked deeply into “Adam’s Navel,” and Jacques Roger discussed the riddle of carnivores and herbivores in Eden in Life Sciences, 168. For lust in Eden, see Saint Augustine below.
“ready servant of the will.”: Saint Augustine, The City of God, Chap. 23. Online at http://tinyurl.com/gpsx7la.
“rather like a drawbridge”: Jacobs, Original Sin, 61.
“tranquility of mind”: Saint Augustine quoted in Nightingale, Once Out of Nature, 30.
“The female parts: Ibid., 46.
set the clock forward: Ibid., 30.
devoured by sharks: See the brilliant essay called “Continuity, Survival and Resurrection,” Chapter 7 in Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption. See also John Carey, John Donne: Life, Mind and Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 219–226.
“the eaten flesh will be restored: Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book 22, Chap. 20. Online at http://tinyurl.com/zhsabbc.
“All our activity: Nightingale, Once Out of Nature, 51.
To each his own [FN]: Mark Twain, Notebook, 397. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jk24f96.
“In order that the happiness: Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, vol. 5 (Part III, Second Section and Supplement), 2960. The quoted passage comes from a
section entitled, “Whether the Blessed in Heaven Will See the Sufferings of the Damned?”
“What bliss will fill: Donald Bloesch, The Last Things: Resurrection, Judgment, Glory (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2004), 223.
CHAPTER FOUR: UNMOORED IN TIME
The very word “autopsy”: Bainbridge, Making Babies, 56.
From roughly 1300: Park, “The Criminal and the Saintly Body,” 4–6.
Cleopatra supposedly ignored: Needham, Embryology, 47.
Nero, seldom outdone: Park, “Dissecting the Female Body,” 29–38. Park notes that the story first appeared more than a thousand years after Nero’s death.
the “great disgust” we feel: Andrea Carlino, Books of the Body: Anatomical Ritual and Renaissance Learning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 156.
He missed another chance [FN]: Susan Mattern, The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 222.
“windows into the body”: Rob Dunn, The Man Who Touched His Own Heart: True Tales of Science, Surgery, and Mystery (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 29.
“It is far more excellent: Saint Augustine, On the Soul and Its Origin, Chap. 14. Online at http://tinyurl.com/jrvwxq4.
“cruel zeal for science”: Carlino, Books of the Body, 165.
“the lust of the eyes”: William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 60.
“If the wisest men: Westfall, Science and Religion, 22.
After the Fall: Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 17.
“Again will Achilles go: Wootton, The Invention of Science, 75.
“To ‘dis-cover’ was to pull away: McMahon, Divine Fury, 4.
“Virtually every drawing: Clayton and Philo, Leonardo, 9.
almost precisely the same time: Leonardo’s cutaway drawing of a man and woman having sex “dates from about 1492–4,” according to Keele in Anatomical Drawings, 69. Clayton and Philo date the drawing at “around 1490,” in Leonardo, 10.
“an hundred things: Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Science (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 82. Harrison cited a passage from Boyle’s The Christian Virtuoso in Works, vol. 5, 520.
a kind of P.S.: Kemp, ed., Leonardo on Painting, 251.
A man of “supernatural” beauty: Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Artists (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 284.
pinks and purples: Jones, Lost Battles, 13, 149, 157.
Leonardo’s mirror-writing: Clayton and Philo, Leonardo, 9.
As Leonardo drew things: Keele, Anatomical Drawings, 69.
“sperm is a drop of brain.”: The ancient writer was Diogenes Laertius (who was not the more famous Diogenes), quoted in Pieter Willem Van der Horst, Hellenism, Judaism, Christianity: Essays on Their Interaction (Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1998), 221.
“soft and feeble”: Keele, Elements, 350.
“beans and Pease: Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book or The Whole Art of Midwifry Discovered (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 30.
“If an adversary says: Keele, Elements, 350.
a great wind to enlarge: Clayton and Philo, Leonardo, 157.
“a tan-colored small cap”: Jones, Lost Battles, 16.
“Many die thus: Keele, Elements, 350.
“The act of coitus: Keele and Roberts, Anatomical Drawings, 69.
The comment turns up [FN]: Clayton and Philo, Leonardo, 99.
“It remains obstinate: Keele, Elements, 350.
“This old man: Clayton and Philo, Leonardo, 18.
“more than thirty”: Ibid., 30.
“inhuman and disgusting: Ibid., 21.
“Get hold of a skull”: “Previously Unexhibited Page from Leonardo’s Notebooks Includes Artist’s ‘To Do’ List,” Royal Collection Trust, 2012. Online at http://tinyurl.com/j6mfvsz.
“These I intend to describe: Keele, Elements, 36.
“It is noteworthy”: Ibid.
“You who say it would be better: Jones, Lost Battles, 3.
much that is mysterious”: Suh, ed., Leonardo’s Notebooks, 181.
CHAPTER FIVE: “DOUBLE, DOUBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE”
some further terror: Stuart Banner, The Death Penalty: An American History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 77.
“Evil men, who did harm: C. Jill O’Bryan, Carnal Art: Orlan’s Refacing (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 65.
“secrets of nature revealed: Gross, “Rembrandt’s ‘The Anatomy Lesson.’”
unmarried and abandoned: Julie V. Hansen, “Resurrecting Death: Anatomical Art in the Cabinet of Dr. Frederick Ruysch,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 4 (Dec., 1996): 671.
“Mr. Doctor be made not: Power, Harvey, 58.
stealing hearts or kidneys: Heckscher, Rembrandt’s Anatomy, 27.
“in order that everyone may come”: Wright, Harvey, 61.
“First you must obtain: Vesalius, Human Body, Book I, 371.
“in the hope of seeing: Ibid., Book I, 382.
“troublesome, dirty, and difficult.”: Ibid., Book I, 370.
Macbeth’s witches: All quotes in this paragraph are from Vesalius, Human Body, Book I, 374.
Samuel Pepys wrote: Pepys’s diary is online at http://tinyurl.com/kcbu4qt.
“Jews or other infidels.”: Wright, Harvey, 71.
So-called resurrection men: Stott, The Poet and the Vampyre, 33.
a murder like this: Rosner, The Anatomy Murders, 1. The full passage can be found in West Port Murders by Thomas Ireland (Edinburgh, 1829), 1.
Dr. Knox claimed: Bates, Robert Knox, 69.
“storm-tossed upon a mighty sea: Vesalius, Human Body, Book V, 145.
Genius though he was: Fritjof Capra, Learning from Leonardo: Decoding the Notebooks of a Genius (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2013), 294.
“The unsuspecting student plunges: Miller, The Body in Question, 177.
CHAPTER SIX: DOOR A OR DOOR B?
“A Man was first a Boy”: Aughterson, ed., Renaissance Woman, 406.
“But he had not read very long”: Aubrey, Brief Lives, 131.
“His tongs were ready: Keynes, Harvey, 214.
“which is itself loathsome”: Ibid., 96.
“The examination of the bodies: Power, Harvey, 148.
Robert Boyle [FN]: Fudge, ed., Renaissance Beasts, 199. The passage in Boyle comes from his Works, vol. 2, 7.
“we could scarce see: Power, Harvey, 85.
“a spleen hanging like a letter V.”: Keynes, Harvey, 132.
according to one biographer: Wright, Harvey, 98.
special note of the “huge” colon: Ibid.
As well as demonstrably [FN]: Richardson, Death, Dissection, 31.
the historian Thomas Laqueur: Laqueur, Making Sex, 79.
women with their insides out: Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination, 37.
“Nothing is accidental: Leroi, The Lagoon, 10.
“When also in coition: Nathaniel Highmore, The History of Generation (London: 1651), 85. Online at http://tinyurl.com/zd5qf3r.
“Men should take their time: Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine, 130–131.
one voluptuous sensation.”: Harvey, On Generation in The Works of William Harvey (London, 1857), 294. Online at http://tinyurl.com/zq2wb4e.
“I, for my part, greatly wonder: Merchant, The Death of Nature, 159.
“pre-eminently the seat of woman’s delight”: Laqueur, Making Sex, 64.
the names of their male counterparts: Fletcher, Gender, Sex, and Subordination, 35.
Galen made a rueful comparison: Laqueur, Making Sex, 28.
By this reasoning [FN]: Pantel, ed., Women in the West, 66.
“Their secret internal organs: Charles Rosenberg and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female Animal: Medical and Biological Views of Women,” in Charles Rosenberg, No Other Gods: On Science and American Social Thought (Baltimore
: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 57.
“owing to youth: Pantel, ed., History of Women, 75.
“It rose naturally toward the heavens: Wiesner, Women and Gender, 32.
In the Middle Ages [FN]: Boyce, Born Bad, 37.
“In a weaker organism,”: Pantel, ed., History of Women, 66.
“woman is at one and the same time: Roger, Life Sciences, 46.
CHAPTER SEVEN: MISSING: ONE UNIVERSE (REWARD TO FINDER)
“I myself have seen a hen ostrich: Birkhead, Wisdom of Birds, 312.
The eggs of all mammals: Carl G. Hartman, “How Large Is the Mammalian Egg?” Quarterly Review of Biology 4 (1929): 373–388.
“In a black drake: Birkhead, Wisdom of Birds, 312.
a rooster burned at the stake: Ibid., 274.
“an almost complete egg: Power, Harvey, 29.
“as by Contagion”: Wilson, Invisible World, 110.
“epidemic, contagious, and pestilential: Merchant, The Death of Nature, 160.
“analogous to the essence: Wilson, Invisible World, 107.
An embryo was a “conception”: Moore, Science as a Way of Knowing, 484, and Bainbridge, Making Babies, 65. Shakespeare punned on the double meaning of “conceive” in King Lear (Act 1, Scene 1).
When the New York Times reported: New York Times, Dec. 29, 1960.
now called capillaries: Bainbridge, Making Babies, 59. The first to see capillaries was Antony van Leeuwenhoek, in 1688. (Harvey died in 1657.) See Ruestow, Microscope, 175.
“mucous filaments like spiders’ threads,”: Keynes, Harvey, 346–347, and Cobb, Generation, 28–29.
Disputations Touching the Generation: The book was originally published in Latin but translated almost at once into English.
“till he was almost dead with cold,”: Aubrey, Brief Lives, 134.
Those who would reduce: Ibid.
“All animals whatsoever: Trounson and Gosden, eds., Oocyte, 3.
Both the hen and housewife: The poem was by a writer and physician named Martin Lluelyn.
he discounted the role: Roger, Life Sciences, 205.
did “but replace one mystery: Gasking, Investigations, 35.