http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives Blog from the Royal Society, the UK and Commonwealth academy of science. Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:47:49 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Next month I'm taking the RMS ship to St Helena, following the route taken by several members of the Royal Society. This small Atlantic island was originally discovered in 1502-5 during Vasco da Gama's journey to the East Indies and during the sixteenth century was visited (willingly and unwilling) by ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2008/02/28/st-helena/ I've just been referred to this searchable collection of document descriptions and images online, the Waller Collection from Uppsala University. It includes a letter from Hooke to his friend the MP, natural philosopher and antiquary James Long dated 1688 in which he discusses the auctioning of books, sends a new ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2008/01/20/69/ Robert Knox was a close correspondent of the Royal Society, and a particularly close friend of Robert Hooke. His 'Historical Relation of Ceylon', published under the auspices of the Royal Society and the East India Company in 1681 provides an in-depth commentary on the social and political life of the ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/12/12/captain-knoxs-excellent-adventure/ The global eradication of smallpox is viewed as one of the major achievements of twentieth century medicine. However, the history of inoculation against smallpox is much older. The technique of inoculating against the disease by using a small amount of bodily fluid from an infected person was well known in ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/11/13/smallpox/ The Hooke folio is now online and searchable at http://webapps.qmul.ac.uk/cell/Hooke/Hooke.html while the visually stunning 'turning the pages' can be found at http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/library/HookeTTP/hooke_broadband.htm. We'll be continuing this blog, talking about new discoveries we make in the archives and their impact for science and society today. We will soon be joined by two ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/10/16/life-after-hooke/ Snake venom is still a poison that is hard to combat and presents a real public health problem in tropical countries. Treatments are still often sought in naturally-occurring antidotes, as the focus of a recent book on the antivenomous properties of plants reveals. Snake venom, like other poisons, can also ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/09/25/snakes-and-stones/ Overseeing the current polar exhibition at the Royal Society is a lone penguin. Percy, who normally guards the manuscripts in the basement, is one reminder of the large collection of animals that once inhabited part of the Royal Society. The animal specimens sent to the Society from around the world ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/08/17/the-polar-penguins-predecessors-and-the-deadly-lick-of-the-rhino/ I'm constantly finding papers relating to the Royal Society outside of the Society's archive. This week I've been looking at some of the letters of Thomas Smith FRS (1638-1710), which are kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. A series of letters to his friend Edward Bernard, Professor of Astronomy ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/07/26/thomas-smith/ Japan is generally thought to have had few dealings with foreigners between the early late seventeenth- and mid-nineteenth centuries. The Dutch and Chinese were the only outsiders allowed to establish trading stations in the period and as these scrolls from the British Library show, their activities were closely monitored. The ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/07/12/scientific-instruments-and-japan/ On a recent visit to the excellent Boerhaave Museum in Leiden I noticed several of the Royal Society's members represented among its collection. For example, on display was a copy of John Flamsteed's beautiful Atlas coelestis, published posthumously in 1729 by his wife and amanuensis Margaret. Most prominent, however, was ... http://www.scienceblogs.org.uk/archives/2007/06/20/circulating-blood-exchanging-ideas/