Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder (21 page)
Read Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder Online
Authors: Lawrence Weschler
The origin of the name “California” in the Amazon warrior passages of Rodriguez Montalvo's 1510
Esplandián
novel is from Walter Bean's
California: An Interpretive History
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968; pp. 16â17), as are the details on Cabrillo's and Drake's California travels (pp. 17â20). For more on Cabrillo, see Maud Hart Lovelace's
What Cabrillo Found
(New York: Crowell, 1958). Drake in the Tradescant collection is from
Tradescant's
(pp. 93 and 314).
A monograph
Tell the Bees â¦: Belief, Knowledge and Hypersymbolic Cognition
is forthcoming, by way of the Society in conjunction with the Visitors, and should soon be available from the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
The Mütter Museum does exist and is quite wonderful. It can be found at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (19 South Twenty-second Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103). Its 1994 traveling exhibit at the Museum of Jurassic Technology was curated by Laura Lindgren, who also coordinates the Mütter's perennially
mesmerizing annual calendar. One of the best accounts of the Mütter's history can be found in its director Gretchen Worden's entry, “Pathological Treasures of the Mütter Museum,” in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica'
s 1994 Medical and Health Annual (pp. 76â79).
Incidentally: that “1579 Lupton” reference regarding the “flayne Mouse” cure: I couldn't help myself (you
knew
I wouldn't be able to)âI did end up having to pursue the matter, and the reference, naturally, is actual. Details can be found in
A Dictionary of Superstition
, edited by Iona Opie and Moira Tatem for the Oxford University Press (1989, p. 267) where the full title of Thomas Lupton's book is given as
A Thousand Notable Things of Sundry Sortes
(1579, with an enlarged edition, presumably not by Mr. Lupton himself, in 1660). Opie and Tatem also record the 1984 testimony of “a seventy-year-old man” to the effect that “When I was young, in Lincolnshire, when children used to wet their beds, their parents gave them roast mouse, fur and all, on toast to eat, and that stopped the bed-wetting” (p. 268).
I resolved not to delve any further into the stuff about urine and grandmothers.
The Magic Lantern at Athanasius Kircher's museum, Rome (1678
) (
illustration credit ill.1
)
The author and publishers would like to begin by expressing their particular gratitude to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information, in Los Angeles, California, under whose generous auspices the plurality of images in this book appear (which is to say, all of those not otherwise credited). In addition the author and publishers gratefully acknowledge:
col1-1
Ole Worm's Museum, frontispiece to
Museum Wormianum
, 1655, courtesy of the Getty Research Center, Resources Collection, Santa Monica, California
col1-2
Frontispiece Charles Willson Peale,
The Artist in His Museum
, 1822, courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy
of the Arts, Philadelphia; gift of Mrs. Sarah Harrison (the Joseph Harrison, Jr. Collection)
1.1
&
this page
Drawings by Richard Hoyen, based on photos by Robin Palanker
1.2
Stills from
Stasis
, courtesy of David Wilson
1.4
Drawing of Sandaldjian Pope by Jesse Cantley
1.5
Courtesy Lucas Nova Sensor, Fremont, California Facing
1.6
Photo by and courtesy of Tom and Maria Eisner
2.1
Photo by Heather Stone, courtesy of the
Knoxville News-Sentinel
2.2
Engraving by Theodor de Bry from his
Amerika
, Vol. II, pl.
35
(Frankfurt, 1590), courtesy of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
2.3
Francesco Calceolari's museum, from the frontispiece of B. Ceruti and A. Chiocco,
Musaeum Francisci Calceolari Veronensis
(Verona, 1622), courtesy of the Getty Center
2.4
Engraving of Theatrum Anatomicum in Leiden, after Jan Cornelisz van't Woudt (1610), courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam
2.5
Engraving of Ruysch's
vanitas mundi
by C. Huyberts, from Ruysch's
Opera Omnia
, courtesy of the Getty Center
2.6
Paintings of John Tradescant the Elder (attributed to Cornelis de Neve), John Tradescant the Younger and his wife Hester (attributed to Emanuel de Critz, 1656), and Elias Ashmole (by John Riley, 1689);
and photographs of fruit-stone carvings: all courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford University, England
1.3
,
2.7
Photos by Susan Einstein, courtesy of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information
2.8
Photos by Rick Echelmeyer, courtesy of the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia
nts.1
Photo of David Wilson (the director outside his museum), photographer unknown, courtesy of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Information
nts.2
Photo of first paragraph of
A Tale of Two Cities
, written by electron beam at 1/25,000 scale reduction, courtesy Stanford University
nts.3
Photo of Jorge Luis Borges by Charles Phillips, courtesy of Time Incorporated
nts.4
Engraving of Columbus in Cuba, by Bertolozzi after West, Bettmann Archive
nts.5
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Frederik Ruysch
by Jan van Neck (1683), courtesy of the Amsterdam Historical Museum
nts.6
Engraving of Isaac Newton by Loudan, Bettmann Archive
nts.7
Engraving of Ole Worm from
Museum Wormianum
(1655), courtesy of the Getty Center
nts.8
Engraving of Mary Davis of Saughall from Ormerund's
History of the County Palatine and the City of Chester
(1676), courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
nts.9
Photo of satyr with cactus horns, courtesy of Tessa Rapaczynski
ill.1
Engraving of the Magic Lantern at Athanasius Kircher's museum in Rome, from
Museum Italieum
, vol. 71, courtesy of the Print Collection, Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
bm.1
Ferrante Imperato's museum in Naples, Italy, from Imperato's
Dell'Historia Naturale di Ferrante Imperato Napolitano
(1599), courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
