Skip to main content

October 29, 1887

 

On October 29, 1887, at Faneuil Hall in Boston, a statue to Leif Erickson was dedicated. This was a triumph of intellectual persuasion, and one of the leading researchers into a Norse discovery, before Columbus, of North America, delivered a speech. This was Eben Norton Horsford. (July 27,  1818 to January 1, 1893) . This chemist at Harvard, published much  evidence for Erickson reaching Long Island, though it  is based on false etymologies of indian names and not well thought of today.

More mainstream is Horsford's textbook: Chemistry, Theoretical, Practical, and Analytical: As Applied and .Relating to the Arts and Manufactures, Volume 2 (1860).

One topic is the manufacture of perfume, and that section is headed by a  poetry quotation:

By nature's swift and secret working hand
The garden glows, and fills the liberal air
With lavish odors.—Thomson

[One of the components of many perfumes is from]
Civet.—The secretion of the civet cat, or viverra civetta; also, of the viverra zibetha. It is scraped out from the glandular receptacle near the anus, and sent to market in small bags made of the skin of the animal. The supply comes mostly from Malabar and Bassord. It is of a pale yellow color, and has a musky odor of such intensity as to be offensive, except in a highly diluted state. Its admixture in small proportions with other perfumes gives agreeable modifications, and imparts strength and permanence.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

May 27, 1564

  May 27, 1564 John Calvin, a Protestant theologian who argued for predestination, was fond of his wife's cat,"Henriette." His wife and his wife's cat died in the same month, and according to J. Stephen Lang, author of 1,001 Things You Always Wanted to Know about Cats, Calvin did not get another wife or another cat. John Calvin died on May 27, 1564.
Post a Comment
Read more

August 23, 1941

Onora Sylvia O'Neill (August 23, 1941) is a British thinker. She studied at Oxford and received a doctorate from Harvard. After a noted career, in 1992, she  accepted the post of  Principal of  N ewnham College, Cambridge, and since 2006 she has been Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge. Her 1997 paper, "Environmental Values, Anthroporphism, and Speciesism" contains a timely  argument  in which Dr. O'Neill, (she prefers that title to the "Baroness" to which her elevation to the peerage allows) points out inadequacies in the use of the term speciesism to argue against according humans more ethical rights than aspects of the non human world.  A viewpoint that puts " a person torturing a cat is on a par with a cat torturing a bird," is not one she finds supportable. The link is to a downloadable version of this paper.  We have  this picture  of Onora O'Neill, in 2002, at Newnham College: We meet in the Principal's lodge at Ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

July 8, 2006

 Raja Rao, the Indian writer credited for his authentic portrayal of Indian values in English publications died on July 8, 2006. From his obituary in The Guardian this description of two books Rao wrote. "Aiming at an ultimately positive encounter between east and west, Rao's metaphysical novel,  The Serpent and the Rope  (1960), displays an intellectuality that goes beyond the textual, through its metaphysical associations and a spiritual dimension that tells us much about the Indian and European worlds. His protagonist, Ramaswamy, entertains his friends with philosophical discussions ranging over an impressive set of themes - including Buddhism, theology, monasticism and world politics - while at the same time he charmingly invites the reader to envisage reality from his Hindu viewpoint, offering the key of distinguishing the projected reality of the serpent from the existing reality of the rope, an image derived from Shankara. ...[In a subsequent book,] Rao manages to ...
Post a Comment
Read more