University

The origins of the College lie in the union of the surgeons and barbers by Henry VIII in 1540 to form the Company of Barber-Surgeons. They maintained a somewhat uneasy partnership in the 16th and 17th centuries when the degree of surgical intervention was limited. The 18th century, however, saw the rise of private anatomy schools and the development of an academic basis for surgical practice through the teaching and publications of the leading European surgeons. As a consequence, the numbers and importance of surgeons increased, along with a firm desire for independent professional recognition.

Hunt Institute specializes in the history of botany and all aspects of plant science and serves the international scientific community through research and documentation. To this end, the Institute acquires and maintains authoritative collections of books, plant images, manuscripts, portraits and data files, and provides publications and other modes of information service. The Institute meets the reference needs of biologists, historians, conservationists, librarians, bibliographers and the public at large, especially those concerned with any aspect of the North American flora.

Welcome to the Darwin-L Archives. The Darwin-L Archives contains the collected message logs and supporting materials of Darwin-L, a discussion group for professionals in the historical sciences that was active from 1993–1997. Darwin-L was established to promote the reintegration of a range of fields all of which are concerned with reconstructing the past from evidence in the present, and to encourage communication among researchers in these fields. The group had more than 600 members from 35 countries, and produced a consistently high level of discussion. In spite of its name, Darwin-L did not focus specifically on the work of Charles Darwin, but rather covered the entire range of palaetiology from an explicitly comparative perspective, including evolutionary biology, historical linguistics, textual transmission and stemmatics, historical geology, systematics and phylogeny, archeology, paleontology, historical geography, cosmology, and historical anthropology. Although the Darwin-L discussion group itself is now closed, this archive of materials generated by the group (more than seven megabytes of text in all) continues to serve as a valuable resource for researchers in the historical sciences.

This site is devoted to the life and times of Dr. John Snow (1813-1858), a legendary figure in the history of public health, epidemiology and anesthesiology.

Between 1339 and 1351 AD, a pandemic of plague traveled from China to Europe, known in Western history as The Black Death. Carried by rats and fleas along the Silk Road Caravan routes and Spice trading sea routes, the Black Death reached the Mediterranean Basin in 1347, and was rapidly carried throughout Europe from what was then the center of European trade. Eventually, even areas of European settlement as isolated as Viking settlements in Greenland would be ravaged by the plague. By the time these plagues had run their course in 1351, between 25 and 50% of the population of Europe was dead. An equally high toll was exacted from the populations of Arabia, North Africa, South Asia, and East Asia. This paper will examine the role of trade in the spread of the plague.

Human populations through time have often flourished near the sea, partly because of the food resources that can be found there, but also because of the ease of transportation of people and cargo by boats. Observations about various organisms and environments were of course a major part of human activities since the earliest times, since the very survival of early Homo sapiens depended on this knowledge to obtain food and provide defense against dangerous plants and animals.

The project goal is to build a web-based collaborative system and digital library for the history of five contemporary technical fields. To that end, we are adapting and integrating the ArsDigita Collaborative System (specifically, its cousin openACS), and the Perseus digital library system. We gratefully acknowledge ArsDigita and Perseus, as well as the larger open source community, for making their software available to projects like ours.

Prehistoric astronomical activity is represented by a Stonehengelike megalithic circle and "Observatory" at Rujm-el-Hiri, near Yonathan in the Golan, the Westernmost sector of the historical Bashan plateau [1] dating from the IIIrd Millenium BC. Star worship is mentioned in the Old Testament [2] as beeing common among the Canaanites*, but the Bashan inhabitants who built that Golan megalithic circle antedate the Canaanites. Very little is known about them and the presumably religous role of their edifice. To the IIIth Century BC Israelitis, they appeared as the work of giants (Refa'im, also Anakim, Emim, Zuzim), and this is probably the source of the legends about races of giants that had lived in Eretz-Israel prior to the Israelite conquest - including the characterization "a remnant of the giants" for Og, King of Bashan, in Deuteronomy and Joshua [3]. Indeed, the Rujm-el-Hiri circle is just one among many megalithic remains in the Bashan, probably at the origin in Greece and England (the "Giant's Dance" = Stonehenge).

The paper deals with some of the scientific research of Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), specifically his monumental 1859 publication entitled On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This paper also points out the "human" side of this most noted of human beings and Darwin's ideas are presented in the context of his times. Today, Darwin's theory of "natural selection" is hopefully well known but how did the culture of his times influence his ideas and the development and acceptance of his theory? What happened before Darwin published Origin and what came after his numerous other publications? Charles Darwin was an extremely important individual for a variety of reasons: the data he collected, the experiments he conducted, and the theories he proposed influenced a variety of disciplines, from anthropology to zoology as well as ecology, geology, and the general social sciences. His influence continues to be condemned, supported, and debated after almost 150 years. [168 words]

The Darwin Correspondence Project exists to publish the definitive edition of letters to and from Charles Darwin, the most influential naturalist of the 19th century: when complete the series will comprise approximately 30 volumes.