Author: vkeller

This talk examines the connection of women to distillation in early modern Europe and the perceived divide between distilling medicines (viewed as women’s domain) and alchemy (viewed as a male activity). The close connection between women and medical distillation has been well established by historians and is reflected in myriad manuscripts and printed books across early modern Europe. In one particularly impressive example, an enormous handwritten tome compiled in 1580 by Countess Palatinate Elisabeth of Saxony (1552–1590) contains several thousand recipes for all kinds of distillates and cites hundreds of women as contributors, including prominent figures such as “the Queen in England” and “the Queen of Denmark;” numerous noblewomen in Countess Elisabeth’s circle of family and friends; and lesser-known women such as “Mrs. Otterstein,” “the stablemaster’s wife,” and “the young lady of Schwartzenburg.” This weighty book is just one of many direct testaments to the great interest in medical distillation in courtly circles and the close connection of women, especially noblewomen, to the practice. King Christian III of Denmark (1503-1559) turned to Countess Dorothea of Mansfeld (1493-1578) for advice when he was interested in setting up a distilling house in 1551. The prominent Swiss physician Johann Jacob Wecker (1528–1586) dedicated his printed book on medical distillates, published in 1569, to Countess Barbara of Waldeck because of the interest and inclination she had shown towards medicine in general and distillation in particular.

At the same time, Wecker situated his own book as part of a male line of succession, led by the “famous alchemist” Geber as well as the Arabic physicians Avicenna and Rhazes. Wecker framed his recipes as part of this learned tradition of distillation, claiming he had gathered them “in part from myself, in part from good friends, and in part from Latin and Italian books,” a statement intended to set his book apart from laywomen’s recipes. Other sixteenth-century authors, particularly the Frenchmen Charles Estienne and Jean Liebault (1564) and Olivier du Serres (1600), made deliberate attempts to distinguish women’s medical distillation from alchemical “abstractors of quintessences.” This talk argues that this divide was largely rhetorical and notes the many points of confluence between women’s distillation and early chemical processes.

Within the history of science, three generations of scholarship now demonstrate that women have consistently contributed to natural philosophy, science, and medical practice since at least the sixteenth century. Yet both popular and even some scholarly narratives continue to present women scientists as “forgotten” or “hidden” figures. While by no means diminishing the vital work of recovering women’s histories, I argue for a shift in how we talk about women in the history of science. On the one hand, by reinforcing the idea that women are perpetual newcomers to the sciences, stories that frame women scientists as surprising rediscoveries who were ahead of their time suggest that women are not a natural fit in scientific communities. On the other hand, such accounts implicitly reinforce a progressive view of history, leading some to see barriers to women’s participation in the sciences as problems of “the bad old days.” In this talk, using examples from the history of science in Europe and North America, I explore how we can tell histories of women in science that matter-of-factly expand our understanding of their contributions while also recognizing that other scientists (and some historians) have perceived women as unnatural and unwelcome, subjected them to cyclical waves of exclusion, and minimized their roles during their lives as well as after their deaths.

 

I explore the roots of STEM education in Victorian books on home science and leisure crafting. I propose that gendered domestic learning spaces during the Victorian period created two powerful emblems of making things: “the forge and the fireside.” This way thinking about gender, science, and technology remains salient in STEM education today. As depicted in books published explicitly for boys or girls, Victorian girls should gather and share information through conversation around the hearth, while boys tinker in workshops adjacent to the home. I will investigate how the spatial organization of “forge and fireside” reflects the gendered practices that children learned for both creating new knowledge and crafting new things.

In this talk, I trace the eighteenth-century origins and use of simulative mannequins in training midwives and man-midwives. Made from a mixture of materials—including textiles, wood, glass, wax, and wicker—these life-size pregnant “phantom” women were used to impart hands-on skills to students before they transitioned into real-life birthing scenarios. I frame the development of these mannequins as an example of technological ingenuity while challenging assumptions that such innovation was the preserve of male medical practitioners who sought to professionalize what they saw as an ‘ignorant’ discipline. In so doing, I highlight the enterprising spirit of French midwives and female artisans, who in creating and using such models in their teaching, contributed to this ‘technological turn’ in the history of obstetrics.

Today, the gentlewoman Eleanor Glanville (1655-1709) is often remembered as the first lady of British butterflies. In Glanville’s own lifetime, she gained a reputation amongst London naturalists as an astute collector of butterflies from the South West region of England. Yet, a turn towards Glanville’s material archive, namely, her extant specimens held at the Natural History Museum of London, reveals Glanville’s success as a collector of rare butterflies from the Americas and thus, her complicity in colonial collecting. This article provides an object biography of a single Pipevine Swallowtail orBattus philenor, c. 1700, labelled “Glandvill.” It follows the butterfly specimen from its obscure origins in the Americas, to Glanville’s residence in the Atlantic port city of Bristol, and to London naturalists’ cabinets of curiosities, where it would became part of collections that helped found the British Museum, the first public museum of its kind. This path sheds light on the complex socio-material realities and gendered dynamics of collecting insects within the context of the British Empire at the turn of the eighteenth century. The insect-artifact, as I call it, provides a rare glimpse at a woman naturalist who, much like her male peers, established informants abroad to collect specimens on her behalf. In particular, Glanville’s proximity to Bristol afforded her access to these informants, some of whom were women. This object attests to the role that empire played in building one woman’s collection of insects and her contributions to the making of present-day natural history museums. It also suggests that while empire opened up opportunities for women naturalists, it did not necessarily advance their reputations as collectors.

Historians of women in science have long pointed out the myth of “invisible” women in science and the ways in which marriage as institution has created “uneven” opportunities for scientifically-minded women. Women in fact can be found everywhere in the history of U.S. science, often found laboring in low-status, underpaying or unpaid positions in private and public settings. In conversation with this historical tradition, this paper examines the gendered scientific lives of two women who forged professional lives without the institution of marriage and in ways that provided for their financial security. A working-class Bostonian, Elizabeth Hodges Clark arrived at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) in 1873 as an untrained specimen sorter and ended her career as Alexander Agassiz’s private secretary, taking on much of the day-to-day responsibilities in running the museum in his absence. An elite Bostonian, Edith Nason Buckingham, the daughter of a well-regarded surgeon, became the first woman to receive her PhD in Zoology from Radcliffe College (which was associated with Harvard’s MCZ) and later used her technical expertise to run a successful poultry farm in Sudbury, MA. Gendered experiences of class, social status, and sexuality shaped Clark’s ascendance as a museum administrator and Buckingham’s ability to make a life for herself and her companion, Emily Fish, in Sudbury in important ways. This history offers lessons about the diversity of ways in which women creatively made independent lives in science in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Gender in the history and future of science: Seeing the forest for the trees

How can insights from the history of gender in science help to promote a more equitable and innovative future? Historical scholarship on the intersectional role of gender in science has taken multifocal approaches, elucidating how identities, epistemologies, and the theories of science itself have been influenced by gender and in turn shape the practice of science. As we look to the future of complex challenges such as climate change and global pandemics, lessons from the history of gender in science can help to guide and reframe the science we use to approach these critical predicaments.

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