The American Naturalist/Volume 10/Number 2/The History of the Origin and Development of Museums
The History of the Origin and Development of Museums.
By Dr. H. A. Hagen.
Collections of objects of natural history are indispensable nowadays to the naturalist in his studies. The advantage of such collections to the student is indeed very obvious, as the study of natural history consists chiefly in comparison. Every description, every observation, is more or less a comparative one, even if the object compared is not mentioned; and it is easily understood that richer and more complete collections help to a more complete study, a more perfect work. The history of the origin and development of collections of natural history is not devoid of interest, perhaps even profitable for science and for the important question as to which would be the most convenient arrangement of a collection. The materials for such a history are scanty, for those of ancient times are nearly wanting. But the impossibility of believing that knowledge in natural history would be attained and furthered without collections induced Professor Beckmann to express the opinion in a short but interesting paper on this subject, some ninety years ago, that the origin of such collections was to be found in the old custom of keeping curious and remarkable objects in temples. This opinion gains some ground, as the medical sciences are considered to have originated in the written reports of convalescents about their sickness, and the remedies used, which were posted in the temple of Æsculapius for everybody’s instruction. There are some interesting facts quoted by the classic authors. The skins of the hairy men from the Gorgades Islands, brought home by Hanno’s expedition, were still preserved in the temple of Juno, three hundred years after Carthage was destroyed. The late Professor J. Wyman ingeniously suggested that they might be the skins of the gorilla. The horns of the Scythic bulls, exceedingly rare, and alone capable of preserving the water of the Styx, were given by Alexander the Great to the temple of Delphi. The horns of the renowned obnoxious steer from Macedon were presented by King Philip to the temple of Hercules; the abnormal omoplate of Pelops was in the temple at Elis; the horns of the so-called Indian ants, in the temple of Hercules at Erythris; the crocodile brought home by the expedition to the sources of the Nile, in the temple of Isis at Cæsarea. A large number of similar cases are quoted in Professor Beckman’s above-mentioned paper. The choice of places devoted to religious service, for such deposits, was very appropriate, every spoliation of them being considered sacrilege. So it happened that such curiosities were preserved many centuries, and the not infrequent additions in such a space of time formed at last a somewhat considerable collection, open at any time and to everybody. The variety of prominent objects was certainly instructive to the observers.
Apollonius saw with wonder in India the trees bearing the different kinds of nuts he had seen before preserved in the temples in Greece. After all, things brought together in such confusion were the origin of collections; and in fact this custom was continued through the Middle Ages, changed only by the exclusion of objects not agreeing with the sanctity of the place. In a votive temple on the battle-field of Feuchtwangen hung the omoplate said to be that of the commander of the Teutonic Order who had fallen in battle four hundred years ago; it is now in the museum in Koenigsberg, Prussia, and belongs to a whale. Even now this custom is not entirely obsolete.
It seems certain that prominent naturalists, such as Aristotle and Apuleius, must have had collections, though there is no direct testimony to that effect given in any of their works still extant. The order of Alexander the Great for hunters, trappers, and fishermen to bring all kinds of natural objects to Aristotle, is well known; Theophrast and Apuleius are also known to have studied and dissected many different kinds of animals, chiefly fishes. Apuleius is the first naturalist known to have found it profitable and necessary to make voyages for the purpose of studying foreign animals, and collecting palæontological objects in the Getulic Alps, but unfortunately all his works on zoölogy are lost. The Emperor Augustus is considered the first prince possessing collections of a scientific nature.
I presume that the certain knowledge of the collections of the great naturalists above quoted was lost, as the collections themselves were quickly destroyed, for lack of means for sufficient preservation. The truth of this explanation is made more apparent since the successive discovery of more convenient and easier means of preservation of objects has made these collections more lasting and permanent through later generations. In a really interesting and obvious way, every new discovery, every improvement in the manner of preservation, has given a newer and stronger impulse to the enlargement of the collections, to the perfection of science.
Some methods of preserving objects were of course known to the ancients, but these methods were the same as those used for the preservation of food or of corpses, and generally not at all adapted or sufficient to preserve objects in a manner to make them fit for scientific purposes. The principal of these methods consisted in the exclusion or the prevention of the obnoxious action of oxygen. So the objects were preserved or dried, pickled with salt or spices, or entirely covered with salt water, honey, or wax.
The sow which was said to have borne thirty young pigs to Æneas was pickled by the priests, and was still to be seen at Lavinium in Varro’s time, some ten centuries later. Large African animals pickled with salt, two hippocentauri and a large monkey, sent to Rome, were seen many years later by Pliny. Other large animals preserved in the same way were sent to the emperors in Constantinople, and even much later the hippopotamus described by Cohunna arrived, pickled with salt.
It was the custom among the Assyrian people to preserve corpses in honey, and this did very well also for delicate objects. When Alexander the Great conquered Suza, he found a very large and expensive quantity of purple dye two hundred years old, preserved in an excellent condition by an external layer of honey. Covering the objects with wax preserved them well, but for scientific purposes not better than the mummies of animals found to this day in the Egyptian pyramids. The celebrated book of Numa Pompilius, found in his grave, was entirely covered with wax, and, though five hundred years old, in perfect condition.
The long space of time after Christ’s death, nearly twelve centuries, is entirely devoid of interest concerning natural history. Curious enough, and perhaps explaining this lack of interest, is the fact that in the earlier centuries of the Christian era the study of natural history was believed to be in some way a proof of religious infidelity. The reason of this will probably be found in the lack of education and study of the disciples and nearly all the apostles. Discussion would have been impossible, difficult, or of doubtful result. Simple faith covered all. So it happened that the prominent works of Aristotle were nearly lost in Europe. Translations of these into the Arabian language, introduced in the tenth century through Spain, and again translated into Latin, were used, and the original text was perhaps not known until the fifteenth century in the west of Europe. Except a few scanty pages in the works of Saint Isidorus, there was nothing written about natural history before the time of Albert the Great, and of course no collections existed. We are told by Begin, in his work on the natural history of the Middle Ages, that rich abbeys and cloisters possessed indeed some collections of medicinal or poisonous plants, of fossils, minerals, and shells. Even in the time of the Crusaders, such collections were augmented by frequent voyages in foreign countries. Some of these curiosities are still preserved: for instance, in the treasury of St. Denis, in France, the feet of a griffin, sent to Charles the Great by the Persian Shah; some teeth of the hippopotamus, and similar objects.
The vast erudition of the celebrated Albertus Magnus, a Catholic priest born in Bollstadt, in Germany, extended even to natural history. His works are in every way admirable. The manifold voyages of this savant, his long residence in very different places, Cologne, Paris, Rome, and Regensburg, facilitated the observation of different animals. The works of Aristotle were known to him only in the Arabian translation, and he apparently possessed no collection; at least, in going through his works, it is evident that the animals were described after living or fresh specimens.
Science, during the next three centuries, did not advance in a remarkable way; we find nothing but repetition of the statements of Albertus and his disciples, Cantipratanus, Bartholomæus Anglicus, Roger Bacon, Vincentius from Beauvais, and others.
The middle of the fifteenth century, and the time immediately following, is one of the most striking periods in history. The invention of printing, the discovery of America and of the way around Africa to the East Indies, the overwhelming amount of gold and silver gained by trade or war in those new countries and suddenly inundating all Europe, followed by the momentous times of the Reformation, made a change in fashion, in study, and in knowledge, never seen before, and perhaps never to be seen again. Art and science advanced in the same rapid manner, the latter prepared in some way by the large immigration of learned Greeks, after the destruction of the Greek empire by the Ottomans.
The same great time produced some discoveries of the highest importance to the existence and preservation of collections; the most important, now considered by millions as the greatest calamity, being that of alcohol. This fluid was known to alchymists long before, but the use of it as medicine, as drink, and for the preservation of animal substance, certainly not much before 1483. A poem printed in that year, in Augsburg, set forth the excellent qualities of the fluid, and stated decidedly that it had been proved that all meat, fish, and fowl put up in alcohol would be well preserved, and would never decay. But ten years later we find the same use and abuse of alcohol as at the present time. The use of alcohol for the preservation of objects offered the additional advantage of their being easily seen and studied. Something else was needed, however, namely, good transparent glass jars or bottles, and the means of closing them as well as possible. I have not been able to ascertain the time of the first manufacture of transparent glass bottles; I suspect, however, that it may belong to some earlier time. The use of cork to close bottles dates surely after the middle of the sixteenth century, as in 1550, at least in France, it was known to be used only for soles. Before this time, and even a century later, wax or resinous stoppers were used.
Paper, a very important object for collections, has been known since the beginning of culture in the East, but the use of it became gradually less and less, on account of heavy taxes upon it, from the beginning of the Christian era to the sixth century, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the use of it was nearly forgotten. Cotton paper was carried by Arabs to North Africa in the tenth century, and two centuries later to Spain. Curiously enough the manufacture of linen paper was discovered through an intentional fraud. People first tried to make cheaper cotton paper by the introduction of linen rags, and very soon observed that the paper was greatly improved by this addition. Of course the manufacture with linen rags alone gave a more perfect paper, and was retained. This was probably first manufactured in Germany, as there exist old deeds in Bavaria on linen paper from the year 1318. Paper mills existed in 1341 in France, and later in Nurnberg, Holland, Basle, and Switzerland. Some mills existed in England, but produced only packing-paper; till 1690 all writing and printing paper was imported from Holland. It is sure that at the end of the fifteenth century linen paper was everywhere used, and cheap enough to displace the costly parchment. It is obvious that the common use of paper was a great advantage to every student. Botanical collections were only possible when the preservation of dried plants could be afforded. Just at this time the name herbarium, with its present meaning, seems to have originated.
Before this time, objects of natural history accompanied only by chance the more valuable objects of trade. Now science seemed suddenly to be awakened, or rather new-born. Every one was in haste to study the new objects, never seen before, and arriving in great numbers from newly-discovered countries. It was a natural consequence that those of the old country should be compared with the new ones, and every student was surprised to find so much around him that he had never known before.
Conrad Gesner, a naturalist from Switzerland, a student of vast erudition and clear judgment, may be considered the renovator of natural science. History begins a new volume with his name, and his works are for the next centuries of the same importance as those of Albertus Magnus for earlier times. Gesner began in a right and sensible way to study thoroughly the common objects nearest him, and by this means was enabled to understand more easily those from foreign lands with different features.
Switzerland, Genoa, Venice, Augsburg, Nurnberg, were at this time in a most favorable position for students. The largest trade of the world, from the East Indies, passing through these cities made them the most important centres of trade. The celebrated house of the Fuggers, in Augsburg, possessed the whole north of South America, a country larger than Europe; and it was therefore easy for them to collect in their princely mansions the wealth and curiosities of the world.
The desire to possess the largest collections increased in a way easily to be understood, especially as the invention of the printing-press had now afforded facilities for making the facts known to the world in a very short space of time. As the trade was in the hands of merchants, of course the collections were in their hands also, or in those of private students more or less widely known, as, for instance, Agrippa, Monardus, Paracelsus, Valerius Cordus, Hieronymus Cardanus, Matthiolus, Conrad Gesner, Agricola, Belon, Rondelet, Aldrovand, Thurneisser, Ortelius, from Italy, France, Switzerland, and Germany. England, too, was not behindhand, and Hackluyt gives an index of private collections in that country. The arrangement and contents of these collections are given in printed lists, the first known of which is that by Samuel Quickelberg, a learned physician of Amsterdam, published in 1565, in Munich. Shortly after, Conrad Gesner published the catalogue of the collection of Johann Kenntmann, a prominent physician in Torgau, Saxony. The whole collection contained in a cabinet with thirteen drawers, each with two partitions, about sixteen hundred objects: minerals, shells, and marine animals; and yet it was thought to be so rich that students made long journeys to see it, and Kenntmann stated that the objects were collected at such an expense as few persons would be able or willing to afford. Similar catalogues are published by Mercati, from Rome, Imperati, from Naples, Palissy, from Paris, and Thurneisser, from Berlin.
I cannot omit here to mention that nearly all interest shown in science was manifested by Protestants, the few honorable exceptions being mostly priests, who understood the times, and the necessity of being always among the foremost, in order not to lose their ascendency. The followers of Loyola were, soon after the institution of the order, eager enough to gain distinction even here. Following the history of our subject, our attention is called to the very striking fact that all departments of science before the Reformation fell gradually into the power of the predominant church, which hurled an anathema against all further investigations. The noble and brave inhabitants of Spain, the valiant and intelligent people of Italy, the nervous and quick-minded French, the accurate and slow Germans, all were in the same way subdued, and prepared to recognize nothing but the ideas approved by the church. Curiously enough, there never existed a stricter censorship of published books, the censors being at first Catholic priests and afterwards principally Jesuits, and their opinions are printed on the first page of many old works on natural history. It should never be forgotten that while those countries which accepted the Reformation grew stronger and stronger, fostered intelligence, and furthered science, all others, even the noblest, degenerated, and never again reached their former prominence, though they struggled bravely and nobly. Everybody will remember poor Galilei, a giant sacrificed to the glory of the church. Every kind of free thought seemed then, as at the present time, most pernicious to this infallible institution.
It now became the fashion for princes to possess collections. They contained celebrated medicines paid for by their weight in gold. Bezoar, the horn of the unicorn, the Maledivian nut, the Alraun, were perhaps placed side by side with such rarities as the pistol with which Berthold Schwarz tested gunpowder when he had discovered it, with Chinese or Egyptian relics, and what would now be considered bric-à-brac of every kind. The German Emperor Rudolf II., otherwise known for his avaricious and indecent behavior, spent large sums of money for his collections, and paid a thousand gold florins, a very large sum for those times, to his artist Hoefnagel, for drawing the specimens contained in them. The magnificent miniatures on parchment, in four volumes, are still extant. The Princes of Gottorf brought together an admirable collection, called, after the fashion of those times, Kunstkammer (cabinet of art), the remnants of which are still prominent treasures of the collections of Copenhagen and St. Petersburg.
A competition now arose between travelers in search of interesting objects. I will mention only those of the Baron von Herberstein to Moscow, of the Ambassador Busbeq to Constantinople, who imported the first tulip, of Olearius to the East Indies, and of Kaempfer to Japan. Eventually nearly every prince felt obliged to have a well-arranged cabinet.
A prominent physician in Nurnberg, Besler, published a description of his collection, or rather figures of some objects, in 1642; the first edition of which is very rare, printed on blue-tinted paper. The collection contains dried plants, Indian nuts arranged on a string (a horrid poison), a branch of a plum-tree with one hundred and twenty plums, weighing thirteen and one quarter pounds, horns of the unicorn, monstrous horns of other animals, a stuffed lynx, whose open mouth and red tongue made him look very ferocious, the cranium of a wolf, the bone of his tongue and wind-pipe, a rodent animal from Moscow, some birds, the cranium of a swan, a nautilus with carved shell, monstrous heads formed by shells, minerals, money, medals, crystals, the sword of Ziska, a Turkish pipe, vases of terra sigillata, fire-proof cloth of asbestos, jewels, guns, old stone hatchets, corals, Indian ink, fucus growing on a stone, and petrefactions.
I have enumerated purposely the contents of one collection of this time, and have chosen this particularly because it seemed to be the most interesting, as the description of it was reprinted four times in the years immediately following. A rich and partially classified catalogue of John Tradescant’s collections was published in England by his son; but one will not be surprised to find such a heading: “Some kinds of birds and their eggs,” and among them “Easter-eggs of the Patriarch of Jerusalem,” and “the claw of the roc bird, which, as authors report, is able to truss an elephant.”
As numerous other collections of this period were arranged in a similar manner, I prefer to mention only one more, that of the Jesuits in the Collegium Romanum at Rome, because the catalogue printed in 1678 shows the interior rooms in which the collection was arranged. As Italy was at this time still the leading country of the world in fashion and culture, and the order of the Jesuits influential and powerful, the arrangement of their collection may be considered as a fair example for others in that century, which certainly more or less imitated it, but never surpassed it. We find large, vaulted galleries, connected with vaulted rooms, the floor covered with inlaid marbles, the ceiling with allegorical pictures. The arrangement of the exhibited objects shows a kind of refined taste, and is agreeable to the eye; the taller and more prominent objects being arranged by themselves in the middle, as, for instance, a number of Egyptian obelisks, on the top of each of which were placed emblems of Christianity. Busts and other objects were placed on columns along the wall, the spaces between them being provided with shelves bearing smaller objects. Pictures and astronomical maps fill the upper part of the wall, and heavier things, such as a crocodile, are suspended from the ceiling. Not the least prominent object of the museum is an obelisk, made in the Egyptian fashion, to celebrate the memory of the conversion of the Swedish Queen Christina, the daughter of the most prominent king in the Thirty Years’ War, Gustavus Adolphus, the fact of the conversion being expressed on the obelisk in thirty-three different languages.
Just at this time a curious historical essay on the origin and development of museums, and the best arrangement of them, was published, the author of which was probably a certain Major, and this very rare pamphlet, first published in 1674, has been reprinted later in Valentyn’s Museum Museorum. According to the fashion of the time the author begins with the enumeration of the different names for such exhibitions, and out of forty of these, seventeen are Greek. I think it would be rather hard to remember them all, and even tedious to hear them repeated. The number of collections from the time of King Solomon to the author’s time is computed to be one hundred and forty, twenty-two of which belonged to prominent princes; many of them are spoken of more in detail, but mixed with fabulous stories. The author believes it very probable that King Solomon possessed a collection, and is sure about King Hizkiah of Jerusalem, and Ptolomæus Philadelphus of Alexandria. He speaks about the museum of the Greek emperor in Constantinople, said to have contained the whole poetry of Homer written on the skin of a dragon, a fact which he concludes to be somewhat doubtful, as according to his calculation this skin must have been one hundred and twenty yards long.
At some length are given details about the collections of the Great Mogul in Agra, of the Inca in Peru, and of Montezuma in Mexico, the last two being real marvels of richness and value. All the animals, trees, and plants of the country were manufactured in pure gold or silver, in life size, and smaller ones in jewels, and placed in the gardens of the court. Montezuma is said to have possessed a zoölogical garden with all the living animals of the country, the ditches for marine animals being filled with salt water. Most of the facts given in this essay are partly exaggerated, partly erroneous; nevertheless some of the chapters, suggesting the best rules for arranging a museum, are quite interesting.
(To be concluded.)