“But if the water come to him and drown him, he drowns not himself” (Hamlet, 5.1.15.)
Author: Claire Seville Litt
Claire Litt obtained a Ph.D. in History from Queen's University in 2022. Her research interests include early modern Florence and the Medici, the history of medicine, women's health care, and gemmology.
Jenner’s Golden Cow: Smallpox Immunization and The Class Divide in the 18th-19th Centuries
Claire Litt // “The public may reasonably look forward to the time, when all opposition to vaccination shall cease […]” -The Royal College of Physicians, 1806 In 1802, the British caricaturist James Gillray (1756-1815) published his print The Cow-Pock, or, the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation! The print features a young lady who looks…
Renaissance Cosmetic ‘Secrets’ in the Age of Home-Beauty: Continuity and Change
Claire Litt // Over the last year the beauty stars of Youtube and Instagram have come face-to-face (or face to mirror, rather) with one of the more superficial spin-off crises caused by the pandemic: the inaccessibility of cosmetic treatments due to the closure of beauty salons. At first glance, it’s a crisis that is literally…
Locating Emotion in Our Language and Bodies
Claire Litt // Practically speaking, heartbreak is nonsensical. We know the heart is a muscle, and that muscles do not break—they tear. Yet no despondent lover has ever laid prostrate on their bed complaining of heart tears. Though it is a muscle, the heart breaks as a bone—and the fact that we say so informs…
Pearl of Oyster, Tooth of Dog, and Sugar: Dental Hygiene in Renaissance Italy
Claire Litt // By the end of the 16th century sugar prices were within reach of the European middle class, and a dental crisis was upon them. The Portuguese colonized Brazil in 1516, establishing a sugar industry through the enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples. The effect was a dramatic fall in sugar prices in…
A Primary Source Document for a Future Historian: The Early Days of the Coronavirus Pandemic
Claire Litt // To the reader: Historians living through the COVID-19 pandemic will reckon with it on two levels. For inevitably the question that arises is not only “What is happening here?” but also “How will this event be retold?” and to that point, “What kinds of documents will exist from which this history will…
Reconstructing the Medical Community In 1427 Florence
Claire Litt // In 1427 Maestro Giovanni Bartolomeo, a doctor of good social standing, lived in the Leon Rosso Quarter of Santa Maria Novella in Florence (Castato ID: 50005679). It was a good neighbourhood–in fact, the richest family in Florence, the Strozzi, lived there. Unlike other Italian city-states, the Guild of Doctors and Apothecaries in…
A Look at a Florentine Book of Domestic Medicine
Claire Litt // A recipe book composed four hundred years ago sits on a shelf in Florence’s Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale (1). Its title, “Anon Raccolta di segreti alchimi […]” (Anonymous Collection of Alchemy Secrets […]) is similar to numerous other manuscripts in the collection and does not hint at all at all at the book’s…
Part III: Keeping Up (Virginal) Appearances: Secrets, Morality and Women’s Sexual Health
Claire Litt // The Countess of Forlì, Caterina Sforza (1463-1509) is a woman whom history remembers primarily because of an apocryphal story recounted by none other than Machiavelli. In his Discourses, Machiavelli described a coup d’etat during which Caterina tricked her enemies into allowing her to regain entrance to her castle by leaving her children…
Part II: The Church and Abortion in Counter Reformation Italy
Claire Litt // The first part in this series on women’s sexual and reproductive health in early modern Italy explored the political consequences of women’s pregnancies, and the devastating consequences for noblewomen when they were unable to conceive. However extensively treated the topic of conception was, especially in scholarly medical literature, the topics of contraception…