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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND
EARLY MODERN MEDICINE

Santorio Santori
and the Emergence of
Quantified Medicine,
1614–1790
Corpuscularianism, Technology
and Experimentation

Edited by
Jonathan Barry
Fabrizio Bigotti
 Palgrave Studies in Medieval
and Early Modern Medicine

Series Editors
Jonathan Barry
Department of History
University of Exeter
Exeter, UK

Fabrizio Bigotti
Institute for the History of Medicine
Julius Maximilian University
Würzburg, Germany
The series focuses on the intellectual tradition of western medicine as related to the
philosophies, institutions, practices, and technologies that developed throughout
the medieval and early modern period (500-1800). Partnered with the Centre for
the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR), it seeks to
explore the range of interactions between various conceptualisations of the body,
including their import for the arts (e.g. literature, painting, music, dance, and
architecture) and the way different medical traditions overlapped and borrowed
from each other. The series particularly welcomes contributions from young
authors. The editors will consider proposals for single monographs, as well as
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(70-120,000 words) or as Palgrave Pivots (upto 50,000 words).

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Alexandra Bamji, University of Leeds
Carmen Caballero-Navas, University of Granada
Klaus-Dietrich Fischer, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
David Gentilcore, University of Leicester
Guido Maria Giglioni, University of Macerata
Benjamin Goldberg, University of South Florida
Georgiana Hedesan, University of Oxford
John Henderson, Birkbeck University of London
Martin Kemp, University of Oxford
Ian MacLean, University of Oxford
Cecilia Martini Bonadeo, University of Padua
Heikki Mikkeli, University of Helsinki
William Royall Newman, Indiana University
Vivian Nutton, Centre for the Study of Medicine and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR)
Antoine Pietrobelli, Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne
Aurélien Robert, Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance Tours
Hester Schadee, University of Exeter
Giovanni Silvano, University of Padova
Michael Stolberg, Julius Maximilian University, Würzburg
Alain Touwaide, Institute for the Preservation of Medical Traditions, Washington DC & Los Angeles
Giulia Martina Welston, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
John Wilkins, University of Exeter
Fabio Zampieri, University of Padova
Fabiola Zurlini, Studio Firmano for the History of Medicine and Science

Editorial Board
Justin Begley, University of Helsinki
Andreas Blank, Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt
Silvana D’Alessio, University of Salerno
Hiro Hirai, Radboud University Nijmegen (Netherlands)
Luca Tonetti, ‘La Sapienza’ University of Rome
Ruben Verwaal, Durham University
Alun Withey, University of Exeter

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/16206
 Jonathan Barry • Fabrizio Bigotti
Editors

Santorio Santori and

the Emergence of
Quantified Medicine,
1614–1790
Corpuscularianism, Technology
and Experimentation
Editors
Jonathan Barry Fabrizio Bigotti
Centre for Medical History Institute for the History of Medicine
University of Exeter Julius Maximilian University
Exeter, UK Würzburg, Germany

ISSN 2524-7387     ISSN 2524-7395 (electronic)

Palgrave Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Medicine
ISBN 978-3-030-79586-3    ISBN 978-3-030-79587-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79587-0

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 Preface

This book seeks to re-establish the centrality of Santorio Santori,1 not only
in the history of medicine but also in the history of science and technol-
ogy, by showing how, through studying his work and legacy, we obtain a
new and fuller perspective on the nature and development of corpusculari-
anism and early modern experimental philosophy. It does so by establish-
ing not only Santorio’s own contribution to both natural philosophy and
experimentation but also his legacy over the following two centuries, in
which his work was a fundamental reference point to many leading figures.
This legacy, however, was never one of simple acceptance of Santorio’s
ideas and findings: just as he sought to follow Aristotle and Galen by
adopting their methods rather than simply repeating their conclusions, so
successive generations of scholars were inspired to conduct their own pro-
grammes of experimentation and theorising by following his lead, even if
they often sought to explain his results through their own preferred natu-
ral philosophies. Yet, ironically, many of them did so applying versions of
corpuscularian and mechanical philosophy which (though they probably
did not know it) had been pioneered by Santorio himself, although his
own corpuscularian and mechanical models of nature remained largely
implicit in the construction of his instruments and experiments, or were
expressed only briefly in his medical commentaries.
The reader may well wonder why, if Santorio was so important to early
modern science and medicine, has he been so little known or studied in
recent times? One answer might be the paradoxical one that Santorio was
a victim of his own success. His name became indelibly associated with

v
vi Preface

his Medicina statica, which was constantly reprinted, translated and com-
mented on for the next two centuries. In particular his name became syn-
onymous with the weighing chair he invented (the Sanctorian chair) and
with the measurement of insensible perspiration for which it was designed
(widely known as Sanctorian perspiration in the eighteenth century).
Although these remained a living part of scientific and medical theory and
practice until at least the time of Lavoisier, they were sidelined by new
forms of science and medicine in the nineteenth century, and Santorio
became seen as a ‘dead end’ in terms of the progress of science and medi-
cine. Although Lucia Dacome and others have done much to re-establish
the significance of medical statics in the early modern period, they have
tended to present this as an aspect of medical thinking and practice tied
closely to dietetics and the application of the six non-naturals to health
regimes, rather than exploring the broader implications of Santorio’s
work, which this collection seeks to emphasise. The contributions cover
different aspects and developments of Santorio’s legacy throughout
European medicine up to Lavoisier and explore the ‘dissemination’ of his
‘seminal’ ideas. They also demonstrate that Santorio’s researches, both
experimental and theoretical, extended well beyond medicine to cover
theory of matter, optics, clinical practice, technology and even astronomy,
fields in which his contributions served as a fountainhead of new ideas and
pioneered new approaches.
Santorio has also suffered from the downplaying of medicine as a source
of scientific development during the ‘scientific revolution’, and in particu-
lar as a source of mathematical, experimental and ‘mechanical’ models of
nature (including the human body) during this period. Traditionally the
focus has been on physics, and especially the development of a ‘mechanical
worldview’ through development in astronomy associated with men like
Galileo and Newton. More recently, this unilateral view has been rightly
criticised and supplemented by a recognition of the importance of ‘chy-
mistry’ (a term for pre-Lavoiserian chemistry developed by Newman and
Principe in their pioneering work in this area), not least in the work of
Boyle and Newton, which has in turn brought medicine back into the
picture, given the strong links between chymistry and medicine. Historians
have also identified the crucial role played by medical practitioners in the
development of all the sciences, including natural history (e.g. Linnaeus),
while even those natural philosophers not directly practising medicine,
such as Descartes and Leibniz, have been shown to be centrally concerned
with medical developments. Gradually this is filtering into general accounts
of scientific change.
 Preface  vii

As a collection of studies on the development of corpuscularianism and

technology, a clarification as to what we mean by the former term is
required. We have taken corpuscularianism (from the Latin corpusculum
meaning ‘little body’) as that set of theories that explain natural transfor-
mations as the result of the interaction of particles. Most notably, we have
interpreted corpuscularianism as a ‘theory of form’ whereby corpuscles
result from the action of an agent (forma substantialis) that divides the
continuum of matter into portions (corpuscula, particulae) that are pro-
vided with the same specific quality and quantity. Resulting from the divi-
sion of a homogeneous and continuous magnitude, corpuscles can always
be further divided into smaller and smaller parts and for this reason they
are substantially different from atoms and seeds. Thus, as distinct from
both physical and geometrical atomism, corpuscularianism is a develop-
ment of Aristotle’s minima naturalia and it remained a subject of debate
within Aristotelian natural philosophy (as well as among its opponents)
until the late seventeenth century. In this sense, while corpuscularianism is
often associated with the emergence of early modern mechanical philoso-
phy, and especially with the work of Daniel Sennert (1572–1637), René
Descartes (1596–1650) and Robert Boyle (1627–1691), corpuscularian
theories can be found throughout Western philosophy. A new phase of
corpuscularianism occurred in the early modern period (roughly from
Galileo to Newton) when corpuscles were postulated as a necessary aspect
of the mechanical model of the world and thus endowed with properties,
such as shape, discrete quantity and weight. This represented a transition
from the Aristotelian physics of qualities towards a rigorous atomism. But
during this period many authors conflate together different aspects of the
two traditions in ways that are peculiar to their approach to the continuum
and the elemental composition of matter.
Although coming to full bloom in the seventeenth century, the trend
towards the mathematisation of forms started in the late fourteenth cen-
tury. In order to be responsive to mathematical treatment, matter ought
to be particulate and divisible into minima of time, intensity, space, light,
motion and so on. This ‘mathematical minimism’ opened up the possibility
of reinterpreting the metaphysical concept of form, which was redefined as
a structure or ‘geometrical configuration’ whereby forms are reduced to
numerical entities and the emergence of new properties is seen as the
result of a different spatial arrangement of the material substratum. Early
attempts to develop this new idea, however, were tied up to the Aristotelian
conception of place, which requires the existence of absolute directions,
viii Preface

and thus retained the concept of form as an active principle able to guide
the motion of corpuscles in an orderly manner. Such attempts are part of
what has been defined as an ‘Aristotelian corpuscularianism’ predomi-
nantly linked to North Italian philosophers (especially in Padua), includ-
ing Santorio. Compared to other Aristotelians, these thinkers, mainly
physicians, upheld a more direct commitment to the physical existence of
minima in their study of the combination of artificial substances to pursue
a truly quantitative and chymical analysis of them. In many cases, however,
they remained committed to the existence of substantial forms which they
used to explain the emergence of new properties. Santorio’s own version
of corpuscularianism and the adaptations and responses to this found in
the other natural philosophers reveal the complexity of this process.
This volume explores one particular aspect of this new approach by
detailing Santorio’s approach to medicine in the light of the theories he
developed, the instruments he invented and the experimental practices
he pioneered. It collects papers resulting from the international confer-
ence on ‘Humours, Mixtures and Corpuscles. A Medical Approach to
Corpuscularianism in the Seventeenth Century’ that we organised in
Pisa in May 2017 with support from the Wellcome Trust (Grant no.
WT106580/Z/14/Z) and the Institutio Santoriana—Fondazione Comel.
Bigotti’s contributions on Santorio himself, and the chapters on Obizzi, an
early opponent (by Zurlini), and on Santorio’s views on plague (D’Alessio
and Nutton), reveal both his continued commitment to a model of nature
which underpinned a medicine delivered with certainty by the rational phy-
sician and the fundamental departures from traditional medical orthodoxy
which his approach produced. The subsequent chapters of this volume
explore these themes for such key figures as Sennert (Newman), Beeckman
(Moreau), Descartes (Baldassarri), Leibniz (Blank) and Boyle (Ricciardo).
It is clear that Santorio himself was read differently depending on the par-
ticular approach of each author and indeed our contributors (like their
subjects) take rather different positions on the degree to which a corpuscu-
larian approach presumed, for example, the rejection of substantial forms.
With the establishment by the end of the century of forms of ‘mechani-
cal philosophy’ such as Newtonianism and the associated iatromechanical
model of the body/medicine, Santorio ceased, for a period, to be a direct
source of inspiration for theories of matter as a whole. However, his math-
ematical approach to the study of the body and his version of the notion
of ‘insensible perspiration’ remained very important to experimental tra-
ditions within medicine and natural philosophy, as is shown by the later
chapters on Borelli (Zampieri), Baglivi (Tonetti), De Gorter (Verwaal) and
 Preface  ix

Linnaeus (Thomaz). The work of Lavoisier and Séguin (explored in the

final chapter by Antonelli) also shows how Santorio’s legacy could take on
new life and meaning as a new form of chemistry was forged.
In addition to its substantive contributions, we also hope that this vol-
ume will contribute methodologically, both to the historiography that
places medicine at the centre of broader scientific developments in the
early modern period and to those approaches which stress the complexity
of how both old and new models and practices were combined, recovering
the significance of figures such as Santorio who may not fit neatly into
paradigms of ‘scientific revolution’ as marked by dramatic changes of
worldview, but nevertheless reveal that more incremental changes can nev-
ertheless embody significant new approaches that underpin crucial fea-
tures of our own understandings of nature, the body, and medicine.

Exeter, UK Jonathan Barry

Würzburg, Germany  Fabrizio Bigotti

Note

1. We have chosen Santori as the most accurate rendering of his surname, as

found in original documents letters, but he is often called Santorio Santorio
or simply Sanctorius. However, we have used Santorio as the short form of
his name in line with how Galileo’s name is usually rendered in English
forms of his titles (Galileo Galilei = Galileo).
 Acknowledgments

The introduction (by Bigotti and Barry) was made possible by research
funded by the Wellcome Trust under grants 106580/Z/14/Z—Wellcome
Research Fellowship for Bigotti entitled ‘Santorio Santori and the
Emergence of Quantifying Procedures in Medicine at the end of the
Renaissance: Problems, Context, Ideas’—and grant SIA
097782/Z/11/Z—Wellcome Senior Investigator in the Medical
Humanities award for Barry for his project ‘The Medical World of Early
Modern England, Wales and Ireland, c1500–1715’. The chapter by
Bigotti was made possible by research funded by the Wellcome Trust
under grants 106580/Z/14/Z—Wellcome Research Fellowship for
Bigotti entitled ‘Santorio Santori and the Emergence of Quantifying
Procedures in Medicine at the end of the Renaissance: Problems,
Context, Ideas’.

xi
 Contents

1 Introduction  1
Fabrizio Bigotti and Jonathan Barry
1 A Tale of Oblivion and Rebirth  2
2 Santorio’s Life and Works  5
3 ‘Not that Close’: The Problematic Relations Between
Santorio and Galileo 26
4 New Instruments for a New Medicine 34
5 Outlines for a Conclusion 38

2 ‘Gears of an Inner Clock’: Santorio’s Theory of Matter

and Its Applications 65
Fabrizio Bigotti
1 Purpose, Context and Development of Santorio’s Natural
Philosophy 66
2 The Architecture of the Theory 68
3 Limits, Strengths and Applications 80
4 Conclusions 90

3 The Uncertainty of Medicine: Readings and Reactions

to Santorio Between Tradition and Reformation
(1615–1721)103
Fabiola Zurlini
1 The Philosophical and Cultural Backdrop of Obizzi’s
Polemic105

xiii
xiv Contents

2 Obizzi’s Motifs and Arguments in the ‘Staticomastix’106

3 Leonardo Di Capua: Uncertainty as Intrinsic to Medical
Practice110
4 Santorio in England: Popular and Learned Criticisms111
5 Conclusions113

4 Daniel Sennert’s Response to Santorio Santori in the

Light of Chymical Atomism119
William R. Newman
1 Atomism and Occult Qualities119
2 Sennert Versus Santorio126
3 Conclusion130

5 Atoms, Mixture, and Temperament in Early Modern

Medicine: The Alchemical and Mechanical Views of
Sennert and Beeckman137
Elisabeth Moreau
1 Sennert on Minimal Particles and the Superior Form140
2 Isaac Beeckman on Atomic Elements and Geometrical
Proportion147
3 Santorio’s Theory of Mixture in Light of Sennert and
Beeckman153
4 Conclusion156

6 Santorio, Regius, and Descartes: The Quantification and

Mechanization of the Passions in Seventeenth-Century
Medicine165
Fabrizio Baldassarri
1 Henricus Regius Between Santorio and Descartes167
2 Regius Against Descartes: The Status of the Mind171
3 Descartes’ Mechanics of Passions172
4 Regius on Passions174
5 Santorio: Weighing the Passions176
6 Conclusion: A Complementary Association179
 Contents  xv

7 Santorio and Leibniz on Natural Immortality: The

Question of Emergence and the Question of Emanative
Causation191
Andreas Blank
1 Introduction191
2 Natural Immortality and the Question of Emergence194
3 Natural Immortality and the Question of Emanative
Causation203
4 Conclusion208

8 Santorio Santori on Plague: Ideas and Experience

Between Venice and Naples217
Vivian Nutton and Silvana D’Alessio

9 “An inquisitive man, considering when and where he

liv’d”: Robert Boyle on Santorio Santori and Insensible
Perspiration239
Salvatore Ricciardo
1 Introduction239
2 Boyle’s Early Atomism and Santorio245
3 The Doctrine of Effluvia and Boyle’s Corpuscular
Philosophy247
4 The Human Body and Insensible Perspiration: Between
Chymistry and Mechanics250
5 Experimenting on Insensible Perspiration256
6 Epilogue257

10 Giovanni Alfonso Borelli and Santorio on the

Explanation of Fevers273
Fabio Zampieri
1 Introduction: Borelli’s Life and Work273
2 Borelli’s Work on Pestilential Fevers277
3 Conclusion284
xvi Contents

11 Bodies in Balance: Santorio’s Legacy in Baglivi’s Medicine289

Luca Tonetti
1 Introduction289
2 A New Interpretation of Santorio’s Statics: Towards a
Fibrillary Conception of Human Body294
3 Does a “statica mentis” Exist?301
4 Conclusions305

12 Disputing Santorio: Johannes de Gorter’s Neurological

Theory of Insensible Perspiration317
Ruben E. Verwaal
1 Balancing Ingestion and Excretion320
2 Perspiration and the Nerves323
3 Spirits and Effluvia329
4 Sweating it Out334

13 Santorio’s Influence on the Dietetics of Carl Linnaeus347

Luciana Costa Lima Thomaz
1 A Work to Be Kissed347
2 On the Development of Carl Linnaeus’ Medical
Thinking348
3 Santorio in Linnaeus’ Dietetic353
4 Linked by Aphorisms363
5 Conclusions364

14 Weighing Authority: Lavoisier’s and Séguin’s

Reassessment of Santorio’s Experiments
on Transpiration371
Francesca Antonelli
1 Lavoisier’s Chemical Education and Medicine371
2 Lavoisier and Santorio376
3 The “chemical” Physiology of Respiration and
Transpiration: Lavoisier’s and Séguin’s Response to the
Sanctorian Tradition382
4 Conclusion390

Index403
 Notes on Contributors

Francesca Antonelli is currently research fellow at the University of

Bologna. In May 2021 she obtained a PhD in History of Science at the
University of Bologna and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences
Sociales, with a thesis on Marie-Anne Paulze-Lavoisier (1758–1836) and
Lavoisier’s Registres de laboratoire. Her main research interests concern
scientific practices, sociability, and gender in the long eighteenth century.
Fabrizio Baldassarri is a Marie Skłodovska Curie fellow at Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice and Indiana University Bloomington. His research
focuses on early modern natural philosophy, with an emphasis on the nat-
uralistic studies of Descartes, plants, and the early modern life sciences. He
has been a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bucharest, at
Gotha Centre, at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, at Utrecht
University, at HAB in Wolfenbüttel, and has published on early mod-
ern natural philosophy, botany, medicine, and sciences
Jonathan Barry is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of
Exeter, UK, and guest professor at Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU)
in Munich, Germany. He is an early modern social and cultural historian
with a particular interest in the history of science, medicine, and witchcraft
and co-editor of Palgrave Historical Studies in Witchcraft and Magic. He
was co-founder of the Centre for Medical History at Exeter and a Wellcome
Senior Investigator in Medical Humanities (2012–2018) for a project on
medical practice in England, Ireland, and Wales 1500–1715.

xvii
xviii Notes on Contributors

Fabrizio Bigotti is the Director of the Centre for the Study of Medicine
and the Body in the Renaissance (CSMBR), as well as a research fellow at
the Institute for the History of Medicine at the Julius Maximilian
University of Würzburg in Germany and an honorary Research Fellow at
the College of Humanities at the University of Exeter, UK. As an intel-
lectual historian, he specialises in the history of science, medicine, and
technology of the late medieval and early modern period (1300–1700),
focusing particularly on on the history of quantification and the role that
classical and medieval philosophies played in the development of early
modern logic, theory of matter, anatomy, and physiology. His publications
include works on late Renaissance Galenism, Vesalius, Acquapendente,
Santorio Santori, Scholasticism, early modern corpuscularianism and the
invention of precision instruments.
Andreas Blank holds a research position funded by the Austrian Science
Fund (FWF) at Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt. He has been a visiting
associate professor at the University of Hamburg and Bard College Berlin
and visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science (University
of Pittsburgh), the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of
Science and Ideas (Tel Aviv University), and the Istituto per il Lessico
Intellettuale e Storia delle Idee (CNR, Rome). He is the author of
some 80 articles, mainly on early modern philosophy, in edited vol-
umes and journals such as Annals of Science, British Journal for the
History of Philosophy, Early Science and Medicine, Eighteenth-Century
Studies, European Journal of Philosophy, History of European Ideas, History
of Philosophy Quarterly, Hypatia, Intellectual History Review, Journal of
Early Modern Studies, Journal of Modern Philosophy, Journal of the History
of Ideas, Journal of International Political Theory, The Monist, Perspectives
on Science, Science in Context, and Studia Leibnitiana.
Silvana D’Alessio is Professor of Modern History at the University of
Salerno; her main interests are the revolt in Naples in 1647–1648, the
plague in the kingdom of Naples in 1656 and Hippocratic medicine in
the early modern age (especially in Pietro Andrea Canoniero’s treatises).
Her main works on medical themes are Per un principe “medico publico”.
Il percorso di Pietro Andrea Canoniero (Scandicci: CET, 2015); “Usi
politici della medicina nella prima età moderna”, in Interpretare e curare.
Medicina e salute nel Rinascimento, ed. by M. Conforti, A. Carlino and
A. Clericuzio, Rome, Carocci, 2013, pp. 269–282; “On the Plague in
Naples, 1656: Expedients and Remedies” in C. De Caprio, D. Cecere,
 Notes on Contributors  xix

L. Gianfrancesco, P. Palmieri (eds.), Disaster Narratives in Early Modern

Naples. Politics, Communication and Culture, 2018, pp. 187–204; “L’aria
innocente. Geronimo Gatta e le sue fonti,” in Mediterranea-ricerche
storiche, a. XV, n. 44, dic. 2018, pp. 587–612; “Un allievo di Marco
Aurelio Severino sulla peste di Napoli,” Medicina Historica, vol. 4 (1).
Elisabeth Moreau is an FNRS Postdoctoral Researcher at the Université
Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Trained in history and philosophy of sci-
ence, she started her postdoctoral research at Princeton University in
2019. Her project, “From the Alembic to the Stomach: Nutrition and
Pharmacology in Early Modern Medicine,” is centred on the medical and
alchemical conceptions of digestion between 1550 and 1650 in Europe.
Previous to this project, her doctoral dissertation focused on the emer-
gence of atomistic and corpuscular theories in late Renaissance Galenic
medicine.
William R. Newman is Distinguished Professor and Ruth N. Halls
Professor in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science
at Indiana University. Most of his work in the history of science has been
devoted to alchemy and “chymistry,” the art-nature debate, and matter
theories, particularly atomism. Newman is also General Editor of
the Chymistry of Isaac Newton, an online resource combining born-­
digital editions of Newton’s alchemical writings with multimedia replica-
tions of Newton’s alchemical experiments. In addition, he was Director of
the Catapult Center for Digital Humanities and Computational Analysis
of Texts at Indiana University. He is on the editorial boards
of Archimedes, Early Science and Medicine, and HOPOS.
Vivian Nutton is an Emeritus Professor of the History of Medicine at
University College London. A Cambridge classicist by training, he devel-
oped his interest in the Renaissance when he moved to the then Wellcome
Institute in 1977. Since then he has written widely on almost all aspects of
medicine from Antiquity to the seventeenth century. His most recent pub-
lications include annotated translations of Johann Guinter and Andreas
Vesalius’ Principles of Anatomy (2017) and of John Caius’ autobibliogra-
phy (2018), as well as a study of Galen of Pergamum (2020). His
Renaissance medicine. A short history of medicine in the sixteenth century is
scheduled for publication in 2022. As well as being a member of learned
Academies around Europe, he is also a member of the Ancient Society of
College Youths of London.
xx Notes on Contributors

Salvatore Ricciardo teaches history of science at the University of

Bergamo, Department of Human and Social Sciences. He has published
articles and books on early modern science and philosophy, and he is
­co-­author of “The Reappearance of Galileo’s Original Letter to Benedetto
Castelli” in Notes and Records. The Royal Society Journal of the History of
Science, 2018. His research interests include the relations between science
and religion, the seventeenth-century debates over the theory of matter,
and the seventeenth-century Italian scientific academies.
Luciana Costa Lima Thomaz is a physician, specialist in the field of
integrative medicine. Her master’s and doctoral research, developed in the
History of Science programme at the Pontifical University of São Paulo,
focused on the history of medicine, especially in complementary and alter-
native medicine in the twentieth century. Her postdoctoral research,
developed in the same programme in association with the Department of
History of Science and Ideas at the University of Uppsala, concerned the
medicine of Carl von Linné and his particular way of observing the physi-
ology of the human body.
Luca Tonetti is currently Research Fellow in History of Science at
University of Bologna. He received his PhD in History and Philosophy of
Science from Sapienza University of Rome, with a dissertation on Giorgio
Baglivi and his reform of medical practice in De praxi medica (1696). He
has since held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre d’Études Supérieures
de la Renaissance (CESR), University of Tours, and at the Herzog August
Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. Since 2017 he is a member of the editorial team
of Nuncius. Journal of the Material and Visual History of Science (Brill),
and is now serving as Book Review Editor. His work focuses on the his-
tory of medicine, particularly on anatomy and medical practice in Italy in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Ruben E. Verwaal (PhD, 2018) is a Dutch Research Council Rubicon
Research Fellow at the Institute for Medical Humanities, Durham
University, and curator of the medical collections at Erasmus University
Medical Centre, Rotterdam. He has a particular interest in the history and
material culture of early modern science and medicine. His first book
is titled Bodily Fluids, Chemistry and Medicine in the Eighteenth-Century
Boerhaave School (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Verwaal is working on
the medical perceptions and personal experiences of deafness and hardness
of hearing in early modern Europe.
 Notes on Contributors  xxi

Fabiola Zurlini is Vice-Director and Director in Chief of the Studio

Firmano for the History of Medicine and Science (Fermo). Her research
interests and publications focus on the early modern history of medical
libraries and medical bibliography, medical education, and the medical
profession, with a special focus on medicine at the Roman court of the
Queen Christina of Sweden. She is working on publications devoted to
the physicians working at the Roman Court of Queen Christina.
 List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Santorio’s Coat of Arms as portrayed on the engraving by

Jacopo Piccini (1659) 6
Fig. 1.2 Santorio’s Coat of Arms in the Atrium of Palazzo Belgramoni-
Tacco (seventeenth century). Regional Museum, Koper
(Capodistria)6
Fig. 1.3 Santorio in his weighing chair. From Santorio 1625, col. 781 15
Fig. 1.4 Ideal portrait of Santorio as sitting on his chair. Letterhead
from Stephan Mack, Scriptores Medico-Statici, Ms 11100,
p. 159, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna 16
Fig. 1.5 Anonymous (Frans Pourbus II?) Portrait of Santorio Santori.
(Identified by Fabrizio Bigotti in 2017). Oil on panel, 91 x 76.
Antwerp, The Phoebus Foundation. © The Phoebus
Foundation 2020 20
Fig. 1.6 Santorio Santori engraved by Jacopo Piccini in 1659. From
Santorio 1660 21
Fig. 1.7 Santorio’s burial at the Ateneo Veneto in Venice (originally from
the cloister of the Convento dei Serviti). From Paola Rossi, ‘La
memoria funebre di Santorio Santorio’, Venezia Arti, 17–18
(2003–2004), 51–56 22
Fig. 1.8 Santorio’s autograph Letter to Galileo—9 February 1615; MS
Gal 89, c. 239r, National Library of Florence 29
Fig. 1.9 Santorio’s autograph Letter to Galileo—9 February 1615; MS
Gal 89, c. 239v, National Library of Florence 30
Fig. 1.10 Santorio’s autograph Letter to Galileo—9 February 1615; MS
Gal 89, c. 240r, National Library of Florence 31
Fig. 1.11 Tabulated data from James Keill’s Medicina statica Britannica
(1718)39

xxiii
xxiv List of Figures

Fig. 1.12 Tabulated data from Joseph Rogers’ Medicina statica

Hybernica (1734) 40
Fig. 2.1 Santorio’s scheme of the Galenic classification of ill-composed
parts (malae compositiones). To be noted the overlapping of
Santorio’s terminology (situs, figura, numerus) with Galen’s
rationale. From Santorio 1630: coll. 15–16 78
Fig. 2.2 Santorio’s experiment likening the transformation of firewater
into volatile spirit to the generation of the tunics of the
embryo. From Santorio 1625: col. 684D 81
Fig. 2.3 Pneumatic cupping. A syringe is attached to a medical cup in
order to enhance the effects of void. The instrument was used
in paracentesis to dilate the region around the umbilicus and
prepare it for the introduction of the syringe. From Santorio
1625, col. 512D-E 88
Fig. 2.4 Mouth thermometer. The instrument’s functioning is based on
the contractibility of air. Reacting to the body temperature, air
expands or contracts accordingly compelling the water inside
the glass tube to rise or decrease at different levels. From
Santorio 1625, col 219 (‘instrumentum primum’) 88
Fig. 2.5 Hygrometer, clockwork-type. The instrument’s functioning
depends on the contractibility of silk or tortoise cords which,
impregnated to various degrees by the humidity of
environmental air, stretch and contract accordingly. From
Santorio 1625, col. 215C-D 89
Fig. 2.6 Pulsilogium type A2 (Bigotti-Taylor 2017). This pendulum-
regulated device tracks the variations in pulse frequency by
means of a tapered peg (right) which shortens or lengthens the
pendulum wire. The position of the wooden ball on the bar
displays the variations in terms of segments lengths 89
Fig. 3.1 Ippolito Obizzi, Staticomastix (Ferrara 1615). Biblioteca Civica
“Romolo Spezioli”, Fermo. (Copy annotated by the
physician Romolo Spezioli) 104
Fig. 3.2 Santorio’s 1634 edition of Ars de statica medicina containing
his reply to Obizzi’s Staticomastix (De responsione ad
Staticomostacen)109
Fig. 6.1 The report of Regius’ graduation at Padua University. Archivio
storico Università degli Studi di Padova—ASUP, Archivio
Antico, ms. 274, p. 160. (Courtesy of Università degli Studi di
Padova—Ufficio Gestione Documentale) 169
Fig. 9.1 Santorio’s measurement of the heat of the moon. The source of
light is indicated with the letter A, while the instruments used to
perform the experiment are indicated as B: glass to reflect,
 List of Figures  xxv

concentrate, and direct the moonlight; C: thermometer; D:

pulsilogium type D (Bigotti-Taylor classification); E: pulsilogium
type B (Bigotti-Taylor Classification). From Santorio 1625: coll.
77–78242
Fig. 9.2 Santorio’s measurement of the heat of the moon. The
engraving is only partially provided with letters. The source of
light is measured with instruments A: thermometer; B (not
shown in the engraving): pulsilogium type D (Bigotti-Taylor
Classification); and C: translucent glass bulb to reflect,
concentrate, and direct the moonlight. From Santorio 1625:
col. 346 243
Fig. 11.1 Santorio’s De medicina statica libri octo … (Rome: Typis
Bernabò, 1704). Title page and inscription by Giorgio Baglivi.
(Courtesy of Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Call 42.
2.B.18)291
Fig. 12.1 Portrait of Johannes de Gorter. Line engraving by Jacob
Houbraken after Jan Maurits Quinkhard, 1735. Amsterdam,
Rijksmuseum, CC0 1.0 318
Fig. 12.2 The weighing chair in Heydentryck Overkamp, Verklaring over
de doorwazeming van Sanctorius (Amsterdam, 1694). The
Hague, KB National Library of the Netherlands 321
Fig. 12.3 A young man emanating insensible perspiration. Colour stipple
engraving by John Pass, in Ebenezer Sibly, The Medical Mirror
(London, 1794). London, Wellcome Collection, CC BY 324
Fig. 12.4 Jacobus van der Spijk, hygrometer by Petrus Belkmeer,
published in De Gorter, De perspiratione insensibili (Leiden,
1736). Allard Pierson, University of Amsterdam, O 62-6242 336
Fig. 13.1 Linnaeus’ copy of Santorio’s Medicina statica (1647). (Courtesy
of the Uppsala University Library ‘Caterina Rediviva’) 355
Fig. 14.1 Santorio sitting on his weighing chair. From Santorio Santori,
De statica medicina aphorismorum sectiones septem: accedunt
hoc opus commentarii Martini Lister et Georgii Baglivi
(Patavii: typis Jo. Baptistæ Conzatti, 1710) 379
Fig. 14.2 Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze-­Lavoisier, Expériences sur la
respiration de l’homme au repos, Detail (Private Collection) 382
Fig. 14.3 Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze-Lavoisier, A man seated with his
head in a glass container lit by a candle, Detail (Courtesy of
Wellcome Library, London. The title is that provided by the
Wellcome Library) 383
xxvi List of Figures

Fig. 14.4 Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze-Lavoisier, A man being weighed on

a huge set of scales, and a man with his head in a glass container
(Courtesy of Wellcome Library, London. The title is that
provided by the Wellcome Library) 386
Fig. 14.5 An Adapation of Santorio’s Chair. From Santorio Santori,
Science de la transpiration ou médecine statique. C’est à dire
manière ingénieuse de se peser pour conserver et rétablir la santé
par la connoissance exacte du poids de l’insensible
transpiration … Traduction de M. Alemand, Docteur en
Médecine (Lyon: chez Jaques Lyons, 1694) 388
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Fabrizio Bigotti and Jonathan Barry

Anatomists have in effect discovered many elegant things,

but the majority seems to be more curious than useful matters, and the
origin of diseases should be pursued not so much by hands but by
adopting a precise logic, which—except for Santorio amongst the earlier
[priores], and Descartes amongst the most recent [novissimi]—I find
in very few authors.
—G. W. Leibniz

Leibniz to Herman Conring (Hanover, 24 August 1677) in Gottfried Wilhelm

(von) Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe, II.1 (Berlin: Academie Verlag,
2006), 563 (original quote with context): ‘Quid enim est post studium pietatis
cura sanitatis utilius. Nam in plerisque rebus nobis consulere possumus mediocri
prudentia: at sanitatis conservationem fere casui committere coguntur homines,

F. Bigotti (*)
Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, Würzburg, Germany
e-mail: fabrizio.bigotti@uni-wuerzburg.de
J. Barry
Department of History, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
e-mail: J.Barry@exeter.ac.uk

© The Author(s) 2022 1

J. Barry, F. Bigotti (eds.), Santorio Santori and the Emergence of
Quantified Medicine, 1614–1790, Palgrave Studies in Medieval and
Early Modern Medicine,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79587-0_1
2 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

Few, concise remarks, rife with admiration. Leibniz’s words bear witness
to the influence that the Italian physician Santorio Santori (1561–1636)
exerted on European medicine and natural philosophy. His works intro-
duced quantification in the life sciences, his devices helped Giovanni
Alfonso Borelli (1608–1679) to understand the vegetation of plants,
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) to conceive his hydrostatic medicine, Giorgio
Baglivi (1668–1707) to formulate his doctrine of fluids and solids, and
Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) his dietetics.1 Santorio’s masterwork,
Medicina statica (Venice 1614), became the textbook for generations of
physicians and a benchmark of experimental medicine. Praised by Herman
Boerhaave (1668–1738) as the ultimate example of medical perfection, it
set the groundwork for the studies of Archibald Pitcairne (1652–1713) on
fevers, John Floyer (1649–1743) on asthma, James Keill (1673–1719) on
digestion, Jean Bernoulli (1667–1748) on nutrition, Jean-Antoine Nollet
(1700–1770) on electricity up to Lavoisier’s and Séguin’s researches on
oxidation and metabolism.2 In learned circles Santorio’s authority was
equally heralded to uphold the existence of atoms, to explain action at a
distance as a stream of particles (effluvia Sanctorii) and to validate the
belief in the resurrection of the dead.3 And yet so pivotal a figure, likened
to William Harvey for importance and to Descartes for clarity of method,
is today little known, even by the most committed scholars.4 While apply-
ing to all languages, the lack of studies is particularly conspicuous in the
English-speaking world, where the only available monographs are transla-
tions of nineteenth-century Italian works, obsolete in their interpretative
framework and full of misleading information.

1   A Tale of Oblivion and Rebirth

In part at least, Santorio himself was to blame for conveying such an
image of obsolescence. At a quick glance, he might easily pass for the clas-
sic Renaissance Paduan physician, busy in providing students with com-
mentaries to the canonical works of Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna.

in tanta verarum causarum ignorantia, quidquid etiam felicitas seculi jactetur.

Quanquam enim multa elegantia detexerint Anatomici, pleraque tamen curiosa
magis quam utilia videntur, et morborum origines non tam manibus quam
accurata ratiocinandi methodo assequi licet. Quam si Sanctorium ex prioribus,
Cartesium ex novissimis eximas, in paucis scriptoribus agnosco’ (italics added).
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

Santorio himself once joked about the fact that the destiny of commen-
taries is to fall into oblivion,5 a prediction that has so far proved correct.
His fame instead rested on his Medicina statica and in particular on its
dual emphasis on insensible perspiration and the weighing of the body
by using the weighing chair he invented. Although, as we shall see, these
inventions rested on his wider corpuscularian philosophy and his experi-
mental methodology, they took on a life of their own, not always nec-
essarily associated with Santorio’s philosophical outlook, and eventually
eclipsed the latter. Changes in medicine which appeared to render the
medical statics obsolete left Santorio in obscurity, and although recent
scholarship—particularly thanks to the contribution of Lucia Dacome6—
has helped to recover the importance of his statics, such a recovery has
not, generally at least, been accompanied by the same interest in Santorio’s
output as a whole.
Indeed, the context and content of Santorio’s works seem so at odds
with each other that they have been regarded as a trick history played at
his expense.7 This way of looking at his legacy began in the nineteenth
century with Charles Daremberg (1817–1872), to whom Santorio was ‘a
more or less forgotten relic of the ancient physiology’:

[…] we cannot share the enthusiasm of Baglivi, Boerhaave and many other
17th- and 18th-century physicians for the medical statics. I do not believe
that for this work alone one would erect a marble statue to Sanctorius today,
as was done after his death. Sanctorius is more or less forgotten: it is not
even read anymore. The whole edifice of his Ars statica is based on the old
physiology. […] One would be astonished to find so many ingenious instru-
ments in a commentary which is, moreover, entirely scholastic, if one forgot
that Sanctorius was above all a physicist and a mechanic, always in search of
novelties; so that medical statics is less the result of a medical system than the
application of studies directed towards the work of mechanics proper.8

Many have borrowed this interpretation acritically,9 though others have

more recently delved into Santorio’s works and acknowledged the ground-­
breaking nature of his ideas.10 In spite of this, the overall attention devoted
to the Venetian physician has hitherto been patchy and very limited in
scope. The historiographical reasons for this are not difficult to recount.
Particularly damaging to Santorio’s legacy have been attempts to read
his ideas as an embodiment of Galileo’s. The attempt was consistent with
a reading of history as a progression towards the final triumph of the sci-
entific method, which had eventually replaced Santorio’s rudimental trials
4 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

with Lavoisier’s precise chemistry. The life sciences sat at odds with the
picture positivists were keen to sketch, and medicine in particular was
regarded as an empirical pursuit led by outdated methods and theories.
Thus, when the phenomenon of the ‘insensible perspiration’, to which
Santorio’s contributions had meanwhile been reduced, ceased to be a
pressing concern for medical practice, Santorio was praised instead for
having applied Galileo’s methods to medicine.11
Not less problematic, in the least, is the contemporary attempt to coun-
terbalance such an approach. If framing major scientific changes in terms of
‘revolutions’ does get away from Whig history, it sets the discussion of his-
torical problems within a structuralist dichotomy (old/new, before/after,
closed/open, etc.), which hinders any attempt to grapple with the com-
plexity of historical sources. Worse still, in a Panglossian move that reduces
everything to language and text, it advocates for the necessity of accom-
modating historical actors and empirical evidence to narratives and histo-
riographic paradigms, thus requiring historians to locate events on the one
side or the other of an imaginary threshold, which does not exist. As with
all a priori approaches, it works best in challenging established accounts,
but it is of little help when—as in this case—the task is that of evaluating
the merits of historical figures that have been forgotten or whose contribu-
tions defy easy encapsulation. In this sense, the relevance of authors such as
Santorio—but the same would apply to Daniel Sennert, as William Newman
shows in his contribution—is that they are a constant reminder that there
is ‘no simple way’ to deal with history. To approach early modern authors,
texts must be studied closely and historical evidence used to enlarge and
enrich our tentative characterisations of a period or a trend. Thus, in locat-
ing Santorio’s legacy, we pose as reference the existence of a ‘constellation
of problems’ that are shaped by both converging and diverging historical
accounts, each in turn seen as the result of various actors, ideas, methods
and aims admitting of different solutions, where the old and the new sur-
vive, commix and react, in a way that is impossible to distil into a unifying
picture, be it a paradigm or an episteme.12 Such an approach will lead to a
better understanding of Santorio’s intellectual legacy reversing the oblivion
that has affected an author whose contributions are still reduced nowadays
to the caricature of a man living on a weighing chair.13
This new approach ought to start necessarily from sketching afresh the
main traits of Santorio’s life, character and works. These, now enriched by
substantial findings, will help us to reconstruct in turn the problems his
research was moved by and the directions along which it developed.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

2   Santorio’s Life and Works

Sources for Santorio’s life and personality are scarce and the most reliable
ones are scattered throughout his works. The hitherto available biographi-
cal outlines depend on a patchy reading of Santorio’s works and provide
information that is either unreliable or—when it is—depends almost
entirely on the biography published in 1750 by the physician Arcadio
Capello, who had access to a series of original documents by Santorio’s
heirs living in Venice.14 To the former group belong a series of documents
written either as praises of Santorio’s work and inventions or as part of
large histories of the University of Padua,15 while the latter is represented
by a variety of nineteenth- as well as twentieth-century contributions.16
Useful sources to reconstruct Santorio’s intellectual profile can be found
in Galileo’s epistolary exchanges with his Venetian colleagues, in the offi-
cial documents of the University of Padua, in the biographies of Sarpi
written by Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570–1654) and Francesco Griselini
(1717–1787), as well as in the Iscrizioni Veneziane by Emanuele Antonio
Cigogna (1789–1868).17 Important letters and documents, including
Santorio’s last will found in 1883,18 were published by Modestino del
Gaizo (1854–1921)19 while a few others were discovered around 1960 by
Maria Stella Ettari and Marco Procopio, in what has been so far the best
monograph on Santorio.20 A substantial number of documents and letters
have finally resurfaced as a result of Fabrizio Bigotti’s extensive research
into European and American public and private archives, some of which
will be used here. In the end, however, the most reliable details and char-
acter traits can be found in Santorio’s works. In what follows, we have
summarised the available data with the most recent discoveries and
reshaped some of the conclusions previously reached by scholars.

2.1  Early Life, Travels and Setting in Venice (1561–1593)

The elder son of Antonio (c. 1520–1592/3) and the noblewoman
Elisabetta Cordoni (or Cordonia), Santorio Santori was born in
Capodistria—today Koper in Slovenia—on the borders of the Venetian
dominion, on 29 March 1561.21 He had two sisters, Diana22 and
Franceschina, and one brother, Isidoro (d. 1618).23 The Santori family—
also known as Santorio, Santorii or De Sanctoriis, Figs. 1.1 and 1.2—was
originally from Spilimbergo in Friuli, where Santorio’s grandfather,
Isidoro, was a notary and a teacher at the local schools (1516–1518).24
6 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

Fig. 1.1 Santorio’s Coat of Arms as portrayed on the engraving by Jacopo

Piccini (1659)

Fig. 1.2 Santorio’s Coat of Arms in the Atrium of Palazzo Belgramoni-Tacco

(seventeenth century). Regional Museum, Koper (Capodistria)
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

His son Antonio moved to Capodistria in 1548 when he was appointed

‘bombardier and keeper in chief of munitions’ (bombardiere e sopramas-
saro delle munizioni) by the Senate of Venice.25 Although the position
entailed responsibility mostly in administering munitions, supplying new
weapons and instructing young apprentices in the art of artillery, Antonio
also managed the proceeds of the local salt pans, which were called ‘old
and new Santorio’ (Santorio vecchio e nuovo) as late as the early nineteenth
century.26 The Venetian authorities, reacting in part to a complaint from
the school of bombardiers in Capodistria, officially reproached Antonio
for neglecting his duties in 1583,27 but an agreement was reached and
Santorio’s father was subsequently praised for his effort and commitment
to his work.28
Antonio’s knowledge of the practical aspects of mechanics and chemis-
try related to artillery,29 as well as his profitable management of the fami-
ly’s business, helped to shape the mind-set of his son, both personally and
intellectually. The invention of instruments such as the anemometer, con-
ceived as a maritime tool to use to predict thunderstorms in open sea, and
Santorio’s reading of the bodily balance as a system of double bookkeep-
ing (additio et ablatio) may well reflect this influence.30 Furthermore, the
family’s long-standing tradition as notaries and lawyers was pivotal in
shaping Santorio’s approach to finance, which, by the end of his life, led
him to accumulate a very large patrimony of 41,730 ducats, even if we
only include the legacies Santorio himself provides in his testament.31
His first studies were probably undertaken privately, but due to a long-­
standing acquaintance between the Santori and Morosini families, in
1574–1578 he was received along with his brother Isidoro into the
Morosinis’ house in Venice.32 There he studied with Andrea (1558–1618),
Nicolò (1560–1602) and Paolo (1566–1637) Morosini and befriended
Nicolò Contarini (1553–1631), the future Doge and one of the promi-
nent members of the Ridotto Morosini. The curriculum in the Morosini
family included mathematics, philosophy and classical letters as well as
consort music.33 Santorio himself tells us that in his youth he played brass
instruments to expand his thoracic capacity, and it is not difficult imagin-
ing him involved in the performance of some of the then popular ricercari
and canzoni by Andrea Gabrieli (1533–1585).34 Coinciding approximately
with the beginning of Morosini’s political career (1578), Santorio enrolled
in the Regio transmarina at the University of Padua, where he studied
with Orazio Augenio (1527–1603), Bernardino Paterno (d.1587),
Girolamo Mercuriale (1530–1606) and Jacopo Zabarella (1533–1589)35
8 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

and where he eventually graduated in philosophy and medicine. The year

1582, often taken as the year of Santorio’s graduation, relies on a false
conjecture made by Capello which unfortunately has been taken for
granted by all subsequent scholars.36 Lasting seven years, and beginning at
approximately 1578, Santorio could only graduate in medicine in 1585.37
Aside from his prominent scientific studies, Santorio cultivated some
literary interests. He was a member, and for a short period the president
(c. 1586–1587), of the academy known as Academia Palladia or dei
Palladii based in Capodistria.38 This was a local gathering of young
humanists interested in love poetry, music and classical studies. Santorio
distinguished himself amongst the other members as most interested in
natural philosophical studies, his name being quoted in relation to a dis-
pute (dubbio quarto) on colours and their psychological effects.39 Another
glimpse into the kind of discussion Santorio was involved in during this
early period is found in Santorio’s later editing of the Epistole d’Ovidio
(1604) by his friend Marc’Antonio Valdera (1567?–1604), a member of
the group prematurely deceased.40 The interests manifested in the
Academia Palladia in Capodistria did not prevent Santorio from enter-
taining a more fruitful engagement with the Paduan scientific and cultural
élite. In 1587–1588 we find him as a member of the circle of scholars and
natural philosophers gathering around the humanist Gian Vincenzo Pinelli
(1535–1601) where he met and befriended Paolo Sarpi (1558–1621),
who played a key role in Santorio’s personal, political and scientific
development.41
By 1587, Santorio was a sufficiently renowned physician to be officially
recommended on behalf of the University of Padua (thanks to the inter-
mediation of the bishop Nicolò Galliero, 1528–1595), for a position in
Poland at the service of a local prince,42 probably in the quality of a mili-
tary physician.43 This position lasted five years and involved extensive trips
also to Hungary and Croatia (Carlovac), allowing Santorio the freedom to
occasionally come back to Venice.44 The resumé of a letter sent to the
judges and majors of Capodistria by their representatives in Venice pro-
vides evidence that in 1589 Santorio had departed for Poland but could
occasionally travel back. Discussing a list of possible candidates recom-
mended for the position of the local doctor in Capodistria, the representa-
tives state that, while it had been difficult to speak to Santorio due to his
being very far away from his homeland (essendo egli stato lontanissimo),
they were nonetheless able to meet him a couple of times and that he
would have accepted the position for 200 ducats.45 From this and
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

Santorio’s testimony, we can infer that the period Santorio spent abroad
was approximately 1588–1592/1593. Indeed, as early as 1594 we find
him back in Venice, as the recipient of Mercuriale’s consult addressing
Santorio’s concerns about the cure of a melancholic disease afflicting the
Venetian nobleman Arcangelo Agostino.46 In keeping with Capello’s
account, scholars have fixed Santorio’s return to Venice at around 1599,
but 1594 is much more likely and is further corroborated by the epistolary
correspondence between Santorio and the physician Eustachio Rudio
(1548–1612). In it Santorio had informed his friend as to the hesitations
felt in the Venetian establishment in following up on the promise to
appoint Rudio at the chair of practical medicine in Padua, which eventu-
ally took place in 1599.47
By the early 1590s, Santorio had already developed his distinctive inter-
ests in quantification and experimental medicine. If we accept what he
states in the preface of his Medicina statica (1614), and later again in his
letter to Galileo (1615), he had been experimenting on himself as well as
on different subjects for a period of 25–30 years.48 This points to 1584 as
the earliest date for the beginning of his trials, prior to any possible meet-
ing with Galileo. Santorio’s studies on optics also took shape around that
period and he had the opportunity to refine his knowledge of applied
mathematics as part of Pinelli’s circle.49 Pivotal to his early scientific devel-
opment were the influences of his teacher Giacomo Zabarella, as well as
those of Contarini and Sarpi. While Zabarella’s works introduced Santorio
to the purest form of ‘Venetian Aristotelianism’, which stressed logical
rigour, method and natural philosophical explanations over more meta-
physical and theological commitments typical of the late scholastics,
Contarini emphasised the importance of empiricism and scepticism against
the use of authorities in philosophical disputes, as exemplified in his De
perfectione rerum libri sex (1576). This attitude was later sealed by the
personality of Sarpi, to whom Santorio remained deeply attached through-
out his life.50 In the early 1600s Sarpi managed to enrol Santorio as the
physician of the Convent of the Servites in Venice, and given the proximity
of Santorio’s house to the convent he was the first to assist Sarpi when he
was attacked there by assassins paid by the Roman Curia on 5 October
1607.51 The two shared a variety of interests, not only in medicine and
anatomy, but also in distillation, quantification and optics. A case in point
are Sarpi’s early notes on the composition of matter, collected in the
Pensieri Naturali as early as 1578, which form the background against
which to read Santorio’s approach to the same question in his first work,
10 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

(1603). Here Santorio pinpoints matter’s most important features—as

Sarpi before him—as ‘position’, ‘shape’ and ‘number’ (situs, figura, nume-
rus). The influence was in any case mutual, for it seems that Sarpi later
borrowed from Santorio in the making of his Pensieri Medico Morali.52
As someone whom Santorio had grown up with, Andrea Morosini
exerted a more intimate influence on him. Animated by a profound sense
of devotion to their studies, both men preferred to remain socially incon-
spicuous. Three years his senior, Morosini was to Santorio a model of
moral and political integrity. This was partly due to Morosini’s religious
principles—in keeping with which Santorio had been educated—and
political attitudes, admittedly more conservative than those of Sarpi or
Contarini. Significantly, both men remained unmarried. Yet Santorio’s
inclinations towards celibacy were, unlike those of Morosini, of a more
‘practical’ kind. The scorn of romantic relationships, eschewed by Santorio
as a form of insanity (species humanae stultitiae, delirii species),53 was the
main motivation behind the decision to remain unmarried, which never
prevented him from engaging in ‘less committed’ relationships. In fact, to
get a clue as to the kind of celibacy Santorio practised, one only needs to
read section six of Medicina statica, ‘On coitus’ (De venere), where
Santorio reports the results of his self-experiments on the effects of coitus
on perspiration. Therein he recommends sexual intercourse (significantly
with no mention as to whether it could be practised inside or outside mar-
riage) as a healthy practice leading to a long life. By and large, his approach
to the matter was extremely open. In some works, he goes so far as to
engage with aspects of pederasty—widespread in the Venetian nobility of
the time—which he handles without any apparent moral prejudice.54
Santorio’s critics were, of course, scandalised by such an attitude and some
later commentators apologised to their readers for how sex was treated so
openly in the text.55
Morosini, Contarini and Sarpi were to play an instrumental role in
shaping Santorio’s career and the political links he forged with the intel-
ligentsia of Venice, first introducing him to the Ridotto Morosini and later
leading to his appointment to the first chair of theoretical medicine in
Padua (1611).
It is difficult to locate the activity of the Ridotto within a precise time-
line. Its nightly gatherings, taking place at Morosini’s house in San Luca
over the Grand Canal (today Palazzo Cavalli), lasted approximately from
1578 to 1598. Andrea and Nicolò Morosini gathered around themselves
the highest echelons of the Venetian nobility, including the future doges
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

Leonardo Donà (1536–1612) and Nicolò Contarini, Paolo Sarpi and

his biographer Fulgenzio Micanzio (1570–1654), the future Bishop of
Belluno Alvise (Luigi) Lollino (1552–1625), the mathematicians Francesco
Barozzi (1537–1604) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642), the physicians
Alessandro Massaria (1510–1598) and Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente
(1533–1619) and, for a brief period in 1592, the philosopher Giordano
Bruno (1548–1600).56 The themes discussed were diverse, spanning from
science to religion and politics. Micanzio and Lollino recall these gather-
ings as dedicated to ethics and natural philosophy, while being ‘unpre-
tentious and purely directed towards the attainment of truth’.57 And yet
the activity of the members of the Ridotto must be located also within a
culture of secrecy characteristic of the Venetian society of the time, par-
ticularly with regards to political matters. Politically, in fact, the majority
of the members of the Ridotto belonged to the most progressive party of
Venice (the so-called giovani, meaning ‘patricians of recent nobility’) and
were linked by strong opposition to Papal and Spanish policies, later to be
reflected in their action during the Venetian interdict.58

2.2  Between Venice and Padua (1593–1611)

The ten years between Santorio’s return to Venice and the publication of
his first work (1603) are wrapped in obscurity. From an intellectual stand-
point, the publication of the Methodi vitandorum errorum omnium qui in
arte medica contingunt libri XV (Venice 1603) crowns the completion of
Santorio’s early studies and medical practice. The work, which Albrecht
von Haller (1707–1777) defined as ‘of great importance if little quoted’
(magni momenti opus etsi raro citatur),59 is divided into fifteen books,
which is reminiscent of the articulation of Galen’s De methodo medendi.
Yet the work is not a commentary. Differential diagnosis and post-Vesal-
ian anatomy set the general background against which Santorio defines
the principles of a new method to avoid the errors committed by empiri-
cal doctors. This method is grounded in logic and in methodologically
framed observation which, in order to be certain, must be universal (i.e.
general propositions must be convertible in all cases), accidentality and
individuality having no share in it.60 To reach such certainty Santorio crit-
icises both Galen’s anatomy and those who are blind to his authority, he
debunks occult qualities and redefines the rapport between universals and
particulars. One of the points in targeting empirical doctors is to show that
induction per se does not provide any certainty: if anything, it is prone to
12 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

logical fallacies and leads to the death of the patients. Individuals, on the
other hand, ought not to be seen as qualitative distinct atoms but as tem-
poral and spatial instantiations of universal properties (distinguntur per
hinc et nunc) which are the same in all and are hence measurable.61 Such
properties are quantitative, being figure, number and position, and out
of them all the perceptual qualities emerge, in a clocklike mechanism.62
These premises allow the doctor to gather essential information about the
arrangement of universal properties in individual subjects and so to draw
a precise diagnosis sustained and mediated by the use of instruments such
as the pulsilogium, a pendulum-regulated device that allows one to moni-
tor variations in pulse frequency over time (see Figure 2.6).63 The book
gained immediate success and established Santorio as a medical authority
well beyond Italy.64 Throughout the seventeenth century, it still consti-
tuted a source for Joachim Jungius (1587–1657), Caspar Bartholin the
Elder (1585–1629) and Gottlieb Wilhelm (von) Leibniz (1646–1716).65
Despite this initial success, however, Santorio kept practicing in Venice as
a private physician.
The years 1605–1607 saw the development and final settlement of the
Venetian interdict, in which Venice defended successfully its liberty against
the meddling of the Pope and his nuncii. Although Santorio kept a low
profile throughout the unfolding of the political events, in 1610 his name
was mentioned by Fulgenzio Manfredi (1560–1610)—a theologian who,
initially close to Sarpi, later became an informant of the Roman Curia—as
someone who read prohibited books and was acquainted with heretics.
From both personal and official accounts we are informed that Santorio
indeed was close to Sir Henry Wotton (1568–1639), the English ambas-
sador in Venice, who the Roman Curia monitored closely as an active
instigator of Protestant doctrines and smuggler of prohibited books in the
Venetian nobility, via the mediation of Paolo Sarpi and his friends.66
Manfredi reported Santorio as of close conversation with Sarpi and reveals
that both Sarpi and Contarini were plotting to provide him with a chair in
medicine at Padua.67 And, on 6 October 1611, Santorio was indeed
appointed to the chair of theoretical medicine and also became affiliated to
the ‘Collegio dei Medici Fisici’ in Venice.68 Although important, his politi-
cal connections were considerably strengthened by the esteem of his col-
leagues. Amongst them was the Milanese doctor Lodovico Settala
(1550–1633) who, when requested by the Senate of Venice to hold the
same chair, declined, recommending Santorio as the most worthy candi-
date.69 Santorio and Settala maintained a very close relationship
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

throughout their lives, further strengthened by the arrival in Padua of

Settala’s son Senatore (c. 1590–1636) to study medicine with Santorio. In
a letter to his father, written in 1613, Senatore provides a first-hand
account of Santorio’s performance as a reader. He describes him as a
teacher of great value, clear in his exposition, although not provided with
as strong a voice in enunciation as his colleagues, by whom in any case he
was little loved, due to his many medical innovations and inventions.70
Santorio’s first work as a professor of theoretical medicine was the
Commentaria in Artem medicinalem Galeni libri tres (Venice 1612, com-
pleted in 1611). Although it has so far attracted attention because of the
passages in which Santorio describes the thermometer, this lengthy work
(altogether more than 600 large folios) is relevant in its own right as it
adds substantial new elements to Santorio’s physiological and physical
theories, experiments and observations as well as new details on his life
and his encounters.

2.3  The Ars de Statica Medicina and the Obizzi Controversy

(1614–1615)
Two years later, Santorio came to prominence as an international authority
with the publication of his masterwork, the Ars de statica medicina (Venice
1614). This little book, dedicated to Nicolò Contarini, consisted of a series
of aphorisms divided into seven sections. The first section introduces the
general criteria to measure the insensible perspiration of the body (de pon-
deratione insensibilis perspirationis) and is followed by the other six,
arranged according to the order of the six non-­naturals (sex res non natura-
les), being those factors like air, exercise, sleeping and waking, food and
drink, excretion, sex and the passions of the soul, which the human subject
was believed to be in control of. At an initial stage, Santorio had thought
to write a commentary to the statics, possibly to explain how he gained his
results, but he soon realised that it was superfluous.71 Given the familiarity
of physicians with Hippocrates’ aphorisms as well as the logical proximity
of these latter to mathematical axioms, Santorio deemed the work clear
enough to be published in octavo. Besides, commentaries to the work
started circulating independently of Santorio’s knowledge or will.72 As he
declared in a letter to Galileo dated 1615, anyone interested in the new
method would be able to appreciate its rigour by engaging in the daily
experimentations that the book describes and thus appreciate aphorisms as
the best literary form to collect and record them. In other words, while the
14 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

necessary explanation of the method is supposed to come from experimen-

tation, its general outline remains accessible—because of its clarity—to any-
one interested in it. Beyond their adherence to intrinsic experimental needs,
aphorisms are meant to be memorable, all the while inviting others to
expand upon the knowledge enclosed in the short sentences—a strategy
undoubtedly meant also to enlarge the repute of Santorio as a medical
authority. Although Santorio does not supply enough details as to the con-
ditions of his experiments, we know that in experimenting on himself he
was assisted by fellow physician Girolamo Tebaldi da Oderzo (1575–1641),
who was as keen as Santorio on the application of the new method.73
Santorio performed his experiments on other subjects as well, by using a
special weighing chair, later engraved as part of his Commentaries on
Avicenna’s Canon (1625) and included in the subsequent editions of the
Medicina statica (Figs. 1.3 and 1.4)
According to its author, Medicina statica serves three different pur-
poses: the first is diagnostic, allowing one to foresee the onset of diseases
through variations in body weight; the second is dietetic, focusing on
rationalisation of regimen; while the last is the prolongation of life.74 All
three targets are grounded in Santorio’s experimental proof that the bodily
equilibrium between ingested food and the sensible excretions is regulated
by the dispersion of an insensible matter (perspiratio insensibilis) whose
quantitative variations determine a state of health or disease in each indi-
vidual.75 The hypothesis on which the experiments are based is that, in
normal conditions, the body tends to maintain the same weight.76 As a
consequence, the dispersion of a regular quantity of matter points to a
healthy constitution, whilst sudden changes—all other parameters being
invariant—reveal the onset of a latent disease.77 Latent and insensible are
important terms to Santorio as his statics aims at extending the perception
of the doctor, making ‘apparent’ what is latent and ‘sensible’ what is insen-
sible.78 Thus, the quantitative measurement of the perspiratio insensibilis is
intended less as a matter of investigation per se than as an indication of the
present and future conditions of the body, with more minute calculations
meant to sketch a reliable trend in the patient’s health.79 By calculating the
peak of perspiration the doctor could measure the quantity of drugs to be
administered at any given stage of the disease progression, while ascertain-
ing the magnitude of it (magnitudo morbi).80 In an age when the only
possible non-invasive medical interventions were diet, bloodletting and
purging Santorio’s statics sparked a revolution: it showed that the most
fundamental processes by means of which the organism preserves itself are
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

Fig. 1.3 Santorio in his weighing chair. From Santorio 1625, col. 781
16 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

Fig. 1.4 Ideal portrait of Santorio as sitting on his chair. Letterhead from
Stephan Mack, Scriptores Medico-Statici, Ms 11100, p. 159, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Vienna

quantitative and must accordingly be analysed experimentally, rather than

theoretically.81 In this sense, the fundamental change in modern medicine
brought about by Medicina statica was to convert the classical concept of
equilibrium, as ideal as subjective, into a statical problem of balance
between fluids and solids of the body, the effects of which could be tested
and thus controlled. The work, however, was also meant to serve patients,
insofar as the latter could use the statical measurements to obtain a median
calculation of how much they needed to eat and drink per day, thus lead-
ing to the prolongation of life.
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

The prevailing focus on metabolism has led many scholars to interpret

Medicina statica as a work concerned with problems and belonging to the
framework of traditional medicine. Its emphasis on humours and diet can
be certainly construed as in line with this interpretation, but a closer look
shows that the conceptual structure underpinning Santorio’s work has
indeed changed. For while it is true that in ancient and mediaeval physics
all natural transformations were conceived as either cooking processes or
digestions (πέψις, concoctio, digestio, assimilatio), it is equally clear that
medical statics presupposes a different meaning of digestion. This consists
now of two acts, the ‘distillation’ (elixatio), which brings about the separa-
tion of humours into their elemental components, and the complemen-
tary act of ‘dispersion’ (evacuatio) of residues in form of perspirable
matter.82 It is therefore entirely relevant to Santorio’s conception that he
does not list the actions of ‘emptying’ and ‘filling’ the body (inantio et
repletio) within the six non-naturals: these are not parameters to be mea-
sured but the very actions by means of which the body keeps its balance,
a balance that is conceived quantitatively as regulated by mechanical
actions.
In any case, but from a modern standpoint, there cannot be any doubt
that Santorio, like many other men of the period, overestimated the appli-
cations of his discovery. Then as now, weight is only one out of the many
parameters that are to be taken into account when sketching a reliable
diagnosis. Nor is it true that diseases are first ‘introduced’ into the body
by a weight change.83 What’s more, the very idea that all gains and losses
in bodily weight should be compensated by an equivalent evacuation or
addition lent itself to easy simplification, as happened in the seventeenth
century when the use of diaphoretics became a kind of panacea, curing
everything from fevers to asthma, up to epidemic diseases.84 This was
probably less Santorio’s defect than his followers’: Santorio regarded his
Medicina statica as an ‘art’ and an ‘instrument’ which could assist medical
practice not replace it with a priori deductions. Furthermore, it is a great
loss that Santorio never published the tabulated data of his experiments,
which could have provided vital insights into his method. In keeping with
Obizzi’s criticisms, Kurt Sprengel had already pinpointed this as a funda-
mental fault of Santorio’s method.85 To be sure, however, it was the stan-
dard modus operandi of his time: Galileo, Beeckman and Kepler constitute
an exception only because we possess their manuscripts to supplement
their published writings.
18 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

Despite the defects, of which later generations became more critical,

the relevance of the Medicina statica in the history of medicine and sci-
ence is difficult to overestimate, as the essays in this volume demonstrate.
Santorio’s work established the principle that in all natural bodies qualita-
tive changes are constantly and necessarily associated with quantitative
ones.86 Given the role the human body still played in the understanding of
the natural world at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Medicina
statica had a major impact on the making of experimental sciences, espe-
cially in early modern chemistry, where it helped establish the principle of
the conservation of matter.
If appreciated by many, the ground-breaking novelty of the work inevita-
bly attracted criticisms, initially in a pamphlet articulated in three dialogues
titled Staticomastix, sive staticae medicinae demolitio (Ferrara 1615), written
by Ippolito Obizzi (c. 1550–after 1634). Obizzi uses ad hominem arguments
to minimise the importance of Medicina statica, but at times he raises inter-
esting objections,87 notably that Santorio’s statics does not take into account
the causes and qualities of perspiration, thus making the quantitative analysis
irrelevant as a parameter. Obizzi argues that the same quantity of perspiration
can be obtained either by natural means (secundum naturam) or by unnatu-
ral means (praeter naturam), and that this difference cannot be detected by
adopting Santorio’s methods.88 Obizzi also reproaches Santorio for not tak-
ing into due account the nature of individuals he measures. These become
standardised subjects whose age, gender and conditions Santorio does not
declare.89 Obizzi is especially sceptical of Santorio’s meticulous calculations
in terms of ounces and scruples, which he finds impossible to measure. On a
personal level, Obizzi criticises Santorio’s open stance towards sex, which he
finds impious and not suitable to priests, monks and other celibates.90
It took some time for Santorio to reply properly to these attacks. He
indirectly did so in 1612—replying to the criticisms an unknown physician
had voiced amongst common friends—and again in 1625, while finally
coming out publicly against Obizzi in 1634, with his Responsio ad
Staticomasticen consisting of seventeen aphorisms added as an eighth sec-
tion to Medicina statica, thereafter included in almost all editions of the
work.91 Santorio’s responsiones are concise but sharp: Obizzi is an astrologer
who has no grasp of experimental method and condemns others’ results on
the grounds of hypotheses that have no experimental backing.92 All his criti-
cisms are due to the fact that he does not acknowledge the difference
Santorio constantly makes between ‘feeling lighter’ (ad sensum) and ‘being
lighter’ according to the measurement of the scale (ad stateram).93 In fact
Santorio had recognised the difference in the quality and nature of
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

perspiration, but had conceived both as measurable. In order to assess such

difference he had invented instruments and devised experiments that were
unknown to Galen or any of the ancients.94 This latter point helps us to
understand another essential principle that Medicina statica introduced
into European medicine, namely the distinction between ‘perceived’ (ad
sensum) and ‘measured’ (ad stateram) reality. The distinction resurfaced
again in the correspondence of John Locke (1632–1704), where it was
used by Nicolas Toinard (1628–1706) as an early version of the famous
distinction between primary and secondary qualities.95

2.4  President of the Collegio Veneto and Resignation

from the Chair of Medicine (1616–1624)
The academic years following the Obizzi controversy ran smoothly and
Santorio enjoyed the gratitude and affection of his students. In the period
1616–1618 and again from 1622 to 1624, he was appointed as the
president of the Collegio Veneto.96 The Collegio was created in 1616 and
advertised externally as an institution to grant poor students at Padua the
opportunity to obtain a doctoral degree without sustaining the steep prices
of the official procedure, but it also acted as an instrument of the Republic
to allow Protestant students to bypass the papal imposition that com-
pelled official students at Padua to profess publicly their Roman Catholic
faith. Another aim was to abolish the arbitrariness of the Conti Palatini,
who were previously given the authority to bestow doctorates privatim
without requesting permission from the University of Padua or the
Senate.97 Those granted by the Collegio were prestigious and highly
sought, as Santorio became internationally famous. Around 1614–1616,
possibly marking the event of Santorio’s appointment as the first chair-
man of the Collegio, he had his portrait made (Fig. 1.5). This portrait has
been ­identified as Santorio in 2017 by Fabrizio Bigotti, for reasons of its
close resemblance to the known engraving by Jacopo Piccini (Fig. 1.6),
the height of the sitter, compatibility of the profile with the engraving
of Santorio in his chair (1625) and the surviving skull kept in Padua,
as well as important details showed by the burial at the Ateneo Veneto
(such as beard and overcoat) (Fig. 1.7), as well as for the size of the lit-
tle book in octavo, which is precisely the size of the Medicina statica.98
Although the portrait features no marks or inscriptions, the man may be
easily described as an academic whose age is also compatible with that of
Santorio (who was 55 years old in 1616) while the painter, anonymous
but conjecturally identified as Frans Pourbus II (1569–1622), has been
20 F. BIGOTTI AND J. BARRY

Fig. 1.5 Anonymous (Frans Pourbus II?) Portrait of Santorio Santori. (Identified
by Fabrizio Bigotti in 2017). Oil on panel, 91 x 76. Antwerp, The Phoebus
Foundation. © The Phoebus Foundation 2020
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

Fig. 1.6 Santorio Santori engraved by Jacopo Piccini in 1659. From Santorio 1660
Another random document with
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 XII
DUCK-HUNTING

Sherry promised Big Sue plenty of wild ducks for her quilting dinner
if she’d persuade Uncle Bill to row him.
“Lemme go, too, Sherry. Please, Sherry,” Breeze begged.
“If you’ll kill some ducks, you could go.”
“I ain’ got no gun.”
“Plenty o’ guns is yonder in de Big House. Cun April is got de key.”
“I’ll git you a gun, Breeze,” Big Sue offered, and before the day was
out Breeze went into the Big House with April, through the same side
door out of which April and Big Sue came that first morning.
The side passage led into a wide front hall and a queer feeling of
intrusion seized Breeze as he went past rooms where pictures of
white people looked at him from the walls. Brass andirons and
fenders gleamed out from big fireplaces. Unlit candles left the high
ceilinged rooms in a dim uncertain light. Dark shadows hid under the
heavy furniture, until April pressed a button and a chandelier hung
from the ceiling became hundreds of dazzling icicles, dripping with
light.
April took Breeze to a room where a rack held guns of all sizes and
shapes, each one polished, well oiled, ready for work. April handed
Breeze one after the other to try, making him put them up to his
shoulder as if he aimed at something. When one was found to fit,
April cautioned him, “When you shoot, fo’git you’ gun. Fasten you’
eyes on de t’ing you want to hit, den pull de trigger. Try em now, son!
Don’ squint up you’ eyes! Keep all two wide open. Shootin’ ain’ hard
work! It’s for pleasure! You can’ hit nothin’ if you frown.”
Breeze was glad to get out of the silent house with its book-lined
walls and rug hidden floors. He took the gun home, but he could
scarcely go to sleep for happy excitement over the prospect of going
hunting.

Uncle Bill sat waiting in the stern of a small narrow boat, but he got
to his feet when he saw Big Sue. While he held the boat steady for
Breeze and Sherry to get in, he kept an eye on Big Sue as he
warned her please not to touch Breeze, and he kept saying to
Breeze:
“Mind, son. Don’ put you’ hand on Miss Big Sue. When a man is
gwine a-huntin’, it’ll ruin his luck to let a lady touch him. Be careful!”
He wanted Breeze to sit alone in the bow of the boat, but Sherry
considered and then said, no, Breeze must sit beside him on the
narrow board seat in the boat’s middle. Uncle Bill shook his head
and muttered in disapproval, but Sherry wouldn’t give in.
“No, Uncle Bill, Breeze wouldn’t be safe settin’ in front o’ me dis
morning. My gun feels too ready to shoot. I can’ trust em. It’s so
quick on de trigger it might miss and aim at his head or his back
instead o’ at a duck.”
“Wha’ dat is got you so nervish, Sherry?”
“When my mind runs on some people, I wants to shoot right den!”
“Dat is sinful, son. Awful sinful! I hates to hear you talk so!”
To Breeze, the boat seemed very narrow and the seat scarcely able
to hold two. He knew he couldn’t swim if he fell out, but he said
nothing, and soon Uncle Bill swung them out into the middle of the
deep clear stream.
Instead of being brown-black like the river, this arm of that stream
was filled with the blue of the sky. But its dark depths looked
bottomless and dangerous, and Breeze sat mute, with his eyes
staring down in it until Sherry nudged him and made him look up.
“You got to learn how to swim, son, den you won’ be scared o’ water!
You get dis straight in you’ head now too; when a man starts out
huntin’, e mustn’t never let no ’oman put her hand on him. If e do, his
luck is gone. Uncle Bill is even scared for my right hand to touch you,
for you ain’ no more’n a li’l’ gal. But I’ll risk it. My luck kin stand a lot.
It don’ fail me.”
Breeze listened and answered, “Yes suh,” but he did not altogether
understand, and Sherry’s eyes glanced over the water’s surface.
“Lawd! Looka de creek, how blue e is dis mornin’! Winter or summer,
e stays blue. Dat is what gives de plantation de name, Blue Brook.
Cun Big Sue ain’ told you dat yet?”
Behind them Uncle Bill hissed, “Sh-sh,” and Sherry leaned to
whisper, “We mustn’ talk. De ducks’ll hear an’ we won’t git a shot. Is
you know how to load you’ gun?”
In his excitement Breeze had forgotten, but Sherry took it and
showed him again how to slip two neat yellow, brass-trimmed shells
into place in the clean steel barrels, how to make the gun “safe” and
“ready.” Then he took up his own gun and with quick slidings and
clickings slipped half a dozen shells into its snug chamber. Breeze
noticed that Sherry had purple shells and wondered what the
different colors meant, but before he could ask, a sharp “sh-sh” from
Uncle Bill hissed behind them again.
“Go easy,” Sherry’s big mouth buzzed back in a whisper. To Breeze
he mumbled, “Git you’ gun ready, son.”
The tide must have been going with them for they flowed along
without a sound. Breeze saw no ducks until suddenly dark wings
flashed everywhere in front of them. The gun in Sherry’s hands fired,
again and again. It was all quickly over. Echoes banged back and
forth at one another, then died, and everything was still. On the water
in front of them three limp bundles of feathers were floating, not
caring at all where they went.
Uncle Bill’s laughter cackled out. “Sherry, you can’ be beated! Son,
you’s a shot-man, fo’ true! Yes, Jedus! You don’ never miss!”
He shot the boat forward and Sherry leaned far out to pick up the
lifeless bodies of the ducks he had killed. How strong he was! And
as much at home in this cramped-up boat as on the ground.
“Poor creeters!” he pitied, holding the gay-colored bill of one of them
between his fingers. “Ain’ e a beauty!”
“I hope you ain’ gettin’ chicken-hearted,” Uncle Bill twitted, and
Sherry grinned back.
“Maybe I is, Uncle.” Sherry’s big fingers gently ruffled the feathers on
the duck’s breast to show them to Breeze. They were beautiful,
indeed. The trim head had a high crest of purple and green and
black feathers. White lines were above and below the poor death-
dulled eyes. The throat and warm breast, colored soft tan like a
chinquapin, and spotted with white, were bloodstained across the
fine black markings. The bill was bright pink; the feet and legs, bright
orange. Sherry said they were safe to be loud-colored, for they were
hidden under water most of the time.
The drake’s mates were less gay. The brown and gray and white
feathers on their trim bodies were quiet as shadows on the water.
All three of them were quite dead, and Sherry tossed them back to
Uncle Bill who put them far back under the seat, saying as he did so:
“We better hide ’em fo’ true. Dey’s all summer ducks. It’s five
hundred dollars to kill one! Five hundred!”
“Shucks!” Sherry answered, reloading his gun. “Dem white folks way
off yonder to Columbia sho’ do make some fool laws!”
“If de game warden was to slip up on you right now you’d wish you
had kept ’em, dough. Where’d you git de money to pay?”
“Oh, I know I’d go straight to de gang as a martin to his gourd,”
Sherry answered cheerfully. “But I trust to my luck to don’ git caught.”
All three of them laughed, and Uncle Bill thrust the boat silently on.
Once Sherry pointed to a hollow high up on the body of a leaning
cypress. The tree’s feathery top rose far above the mesh of
interlaced vines and branches on the bank of the stream. As likely as
not a summer duck made her nest in that hollow. They choose knot-
holes or hollows, sometimes forty feet high, sometimes near the
water. Queer fowls. Hard to fool.
As they rounded a bend on the stream a faint splash sounded in
front. Sherry listened with pent breath. “Ducks, enty, Uncle?” he
whispered.
“Great Gawd, Sherry! Wha’ dat ail you’ years?”
Almost at once they swung into sight of April in a boat much like their
own. He had a load of sacks and packages and its back was piled
high with oysters in the shell. His trousers were inside his laced-up
boots and a silver watch-chain dangled from a side pocket.
Uncle Bill hailed him, “Good mawnin’, son! How come you so
dressed up? I don’ like dem boots. You’s a good swimmer fo’ true,
but boots kin drown a fish. A watch kin fool you too. I wouldn’t trust
to no watch. Not me!”
“I rather drown dan let oyster shells cut my feets all up. Plain shoes
don’ hinder ’em. But how you like dese fish?” He held up a string of
long, smooth, snaky-looking creatures. They could have passed for
short fat snakes.
“Great Gawd, de eels! You sho’ had luck wid you dis mawnin’.”
“Luck stay wid me!” April bragged, but Sherry laughed.
“You must be mean Bad Luck, enty? If I’d catch a’ eel, I’d call it Bad
Luck!”
“How come so?”
“I can’ stand to look at a’ eel, much less eat one. Not me!”
“When did you git so pa’ticular, Sherry? You must be kissed you’
elbow an’ turned to a lady, enty?” April sneered coolly.
“No matter how long you cook a’ eel, it’ll turn raw soon’s it gits cold.”
“Who’d let a eel git cold? Not me, I know,” April returned hotly. “Eels
ain’ nothin’ but he catfish. How come you love catfish so good an’
scorns eels?”
“Sho’ dey is!” Uncle Bill affirmed promptly. “Dey’s de men catfish.
Sho’! Anybody’ll tell you dat.” April shoved his boat forward.
“Well, I’m glad you don’ want ’em, Sherry! It would be too bad if you
did. But I tell you, when Big Sue gits dem seasoned up right in a pot
dey would make you pure bite you’ fingers just to smell ’em.”
Sherry said no more, and April’s boat glided on. A bend in the
stream closed its gate behind it, shutting him and his boatload of
food out of sight.
Uncle Bill took a chew of tobacco. “April’s de luckiest man I ever
seen,” he ventured, but Sherry said nothing at all.
Through breaks in the trees Breeze caught glimpses of drab, level,
water-covered spaces. Old rice-fields. Deserted. Marsh-grown. They
lacked the color and the look of life that filled the thick-tangled
growth of trees and thorny-looking vines and bushes encircling them.
“Sherry,” Uncle Bill rested his paddle, “you don’ hold nothin’ against
April, does you?”
Sherry’s answer was slow coming, “Not nothin’ much, suh.”
Uncle Bill began paddling again, and Sherry put down his gun and
stretched, then said that since April and his boat had scared all the
ducks out of this creek, they’d better go across the river into some of
the creeks around Silver Island where lots of ducks raise and there’d
be a chance to get some good shooting.
Sherry’s good humor was gone. He sat dumb, his forehead all
knotted up in a frown. The eels or April or something had crossed
him. Breeze was glad to hear him ask, “Who named Silver Island,
Uncle? You reckon any money’s buried on it?”
Uncle Bill didn’t know. It was named long ago, when each bit of land
here was given a name. These marshes were all fields in the old
days. Rice was planted everywhere then. He pointed to old rotting
pieces of wood that held the tide back until it gurgled as it strained to
get over them.
“See de old flood-gates? De old trunks? Dey used to let de water in
and out. Dey used to know dere business to!” He sighed. “But dey
time is out. De old days is gone. De tide does like it pleases now.”
On an old piece of wood, brown with rot and soaked by the flood-
tide, yet standing guard beside an opening on the bank, several
small black tortoises sprawled out flat, sunning themselves. As the
boat got nearer they all slid into the water for safety.
It amused Uncle Bill mightily. He chuckled and called out that they
needn’t hide from him.
“You like cooters, Uncle?” Sherry asked him with a laugh.
“No, suh!” the old man said shortly, “Not to-day, anyhow. De sky’s too
clear.” He cast his black beady eyes up and scanned the blue
overhead. “I don’ see no sign of thunder nowhere, an’ if a cooter
bites you e won’t never let go till it thunders.”
Sherry laughed. “You know, don’t you, Uncle?” Then he told how
once when Uncle Bill was a boy a cooter caught his toe and held on
to it for a whole day and night.
“Fo’ days, son!” Uncle Bill corrected.
“Was it four, fo’ true, Uncle?” Sherry asked doubtfully.
“Yes, suh! An e’d ’a’ been holdin’ on till now if it didn’t thunder,” Uncle
Bill spoke solemnly.
“What did you do all dem four days, Uncle?” Sherry asked.
“I watched de clouds an’ prayed for de thunder to roll, son.”
When Breeze hoped one would never bite him, Uncle Bill grunted.
“You right to hope so, son. I hope so too. A cooter is a contrary
creeter.”
“De people used to say Uncle Isaac was crippled by a cooter. E
makes like e’s plagued wid rheumatism, but I have hear tell e ain’ got
no big toe on one foot. Did you know dat, Sherry?”
“How come so?” Breeze inquired.
“Well, now, I tell you, dis might not be so. But I used to hear de
people say it was. Old man Isaac is a heap older’n me an’ all dis
happened before I was born. But my mammy used to laugh ’bout
em. Plenty o’ times when e’d come hoppin’ up to de house a-talkin’
’bout how it must be gwine rain soon by de misery in his knee was
so bad, my mammy use to say his big toe wasn’t buried straight an’
dat was what hurt Uncle Isaac. T’ings have to be buried right or dey
can’ rest at all.”
“Whe’ was de cooter?” Breeze asked.
“De cooter was in de corn-field, son.”
“An’ whe’ was Uncle Isaac?”
“E was in de corn-field too, choppin’ grass.”
“Did de cooter bite his toe off?”
“No, you wait now an’ le’ me tell em my way.”
“When Uncle Isaac was young e used to run round a lot at night
instead o’ being’ home ’sleep, like he had business to be. E used to
catch a nap in de daytime whilst he was hoein’. Plenty o’ people can
stand straight up in de field an’ lean on dey hoe an’ sleep good. I
never could, but a lot o’ people can. Well, Uncle Isaac was gwine
long hoein’ a spell, den dozin’ a spell. One time when e opened his
eyes to look e thought e seen a cooter’s head right side his foot. E
chopped down hard to cut em off. But it wasn’t no cooter head dat
time. It been his own big toe! Dat’s how come e’s hoppin’ to dis day.
An’ a-lyin’ ’bout em too.”
“Po’ ol’ man!” Sherry laughed along with his pitying. “I don’ blame em
fo’ lyin’ ’bout dat. I’d be shame’ to tell de truth. Dey say if you tell a lie
an’ stick to it, dat’s good as de truth anyhow.”
“I dunno,” Uncle Bill answered doubtfully, “I reckon sin is easier to
stand dan shame.”
A blue dragon-fly flitted along close to the water.
“Does you know his business?” Sherry asked Breeze. But the fly was
catching gnats and mosquitoes right then and anybody could see
what its business was. Breeze laughed at Sherry’s question.
“You’s wrong,” Sherry laughed back. “You’s talkin’ ’bout his victuals,
not his business. Dat’s a snake doctor. A sick snake is around here
somewhere now. You watch out. We’ll see him. Den we’ll kill him and
hang him up on a limb to make it rain. It’s powerful dry dis fall.”
“If you hang a dead snake on a limb, dat couldn’ make it rain?”
Sherry’s laugh was so merry that Breeze grinned at his own
ignorance.
“Great Gawd, boy! You didn’t know dat! Sho’, it will! In less’n three
days too. Won’t it, Uncle?”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill answered stoutly, but he added there was no use to
bother with the snake, for it was going to rain in less than three days,
anyhow. “The new moon hung in a ring last night and only one star
was inside it. That means it will rain after one day. If they’d find the
snake and kill him he couldn’t die until the sun went down. Neither
can a frog nor a cooter, nor a wasp. Lots of things can’t die if the sun
shines.”
Breeze felt he was learning a lot, and he listened so attentively that
Uncle Bill went on talking.
“Most people have to wait until night to die, and even when night
comes, dey can’t die until de tide turns.”
“How can dey tell if dey’s sick in the bed?” Breeze asked, and Uncle
Bill explained that the people themselves didn’t know. The life that
stays inside them, that knows.
“It knows mighty nigh everything,” the old man declared, “and when
de time comes for it to go, it goes, an’ leaves a man dead as a
wedge.” This statement left Breeze wondering, but Uncle Bill went on
telling how the rice-fields were full of all kinds of snakes, some of
them poisonous, and some not. But the snake he feared most, more
than even a rattlesnake or a moccasin, was a coach-whip.
“If a coach-whip catches you, he will wrap his body round you an’ tie
you to a tree an’ whip you to death wid his tail. Lawd, boy, when a
coach-whip blows dat whistle in de end of his tail, put you’ foot in
you’ hand an’ run!”
“Yes, suh!” Sherry agreed, “I too ’fraid of coach-whips myself. I never
did see one do it, but a coach-whip can outrun a man any day. If you
get to outrunnin’ him, e will grab his tail in his mouth and roll after
you like a hoop to catch you. An’ tie you to a tree an’ whip you. Enty,
Uncle?”
“Sho’?” Uncle Bill was astonished at his asking. “Sho it’s so! I’ve
seen a coach-whip do it plenty o’ times.”
He spat far out into the stream when he had said it, then held one
oar still in the water to wheel the boat to one side, as he asked:
“Did you ever catch one of dose pretty little garter snakes an’ see
him break hisself all up into little joints? Dey go back all togedder
again when dey gits ready.”
Sherry never had.
“Well did you ever burn a blacksnake an’ make him show you his
feet. You must be have done dat, Sherry?”
“No, suh,” Sherry answered solemnly. “I ain’ done em not yet, but
I’ve seen plenty o’ people what has done em.” And after a thoughtful
silence he added:
“Deys one t’ing I do know, Uncle. If a snake bites you and you don’t
die, all you’ hair will drop out every time dat snake sheds its skin.
Dat’s so, ’cause my own done it about ten years until Uncle Isaac
told me to put a boxwood poultice on my hand ebery night las’
spring. An’ dat cured me.”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill agreed. “Boxwood’s good for most eberyt’ing what
ails you.”
“Poultices made out of boxwood will make you’ hair grow and cure
tooth-ache or either rheumatism. Boxwood tea’ll cure de itch or de
spring fever, too.”
“I heard so,” Sherry approved. “Boxwood roots is good for foot
troubles too.”
“Yes, suh. It’s a good medicine. Sho’! De white people knowed it and
dats how come dey fetched it across de water wid em. All de flowers
gardens on dis whole Neck is full o’ boxwood. Some’s grows high an’
some low. Some ain’ no taller dan my finger, an’ it’s old as de Big
House, too.”
“Lawd, how times is changed! Changed before yunnuh was born.
Looks like all de good old days is done gone.”
“We done well enough till de boll-evils come, enty, Uncle?”
“But de boll-evils is come. Dey ruint de whole crop year befo’ last.”
“De crop was good last year after we pizened ’em.”
“But I tell you, I sho’ don’ believe in pizenin’ ’em. No, suh! Gawd sent
dem here an’ we better leave dem lone. If I was you, I wouldn’t run
no pizen machine. At night too, when de cotton is wet wid dew, a
pizen dust’ll stick to you’ feets. When I look out o’ my door at night
and see dat pizen dust a-floatin’ over de cotton-fields in dem big
white cluds, an’ dat machine a-singin’ like a locust, a-creepin’ up and
down de rows, th’owin’ out pizen I git too scared to look. No wonder
de mens hates to take part in it. Dem pizened blossoms is done
killed all de bees on de place, an’ a lot o’ de turkeys and de guineas
died from eatin’ de pizened evils. Better let weeds grow in de fields, I
say. We kin do widout money till we git some crop to take de place o’
cotton. Cotton’s time is out. I ’member when dey had to give up
plantin’ indigo, and people said we was ruined. But cotton done just
as good. Now cotton is failed, and we ought to wait till we git some
kind o’ crop to take its place.” Uncle Bill heaved a mighty sigh as he
said it. “April is too brazen. E would buck Gawd A’mighty. Don’t you
try to be like em, Sherry. No. If April keeps on, e will land in Hell, sho’
as e was born.”
“You t’ink de place’ll ever be sold, Uncle?” Sherry asked him
presently.
“No, son. Not long as de li’l’ young Cap’n is livin’! E was born wid two
li’l’ teeth, and when dem two li’l’ teeth got ripe an’ fell out, my Katy
took ’em an’ went to de graveyard an’ buried ’em in a clear place
right longside his gran’pa.
“No matter whe’ da li’l’ boy goes or how long e stays gone from here,
dis place’ll hold to him. Dem li’l’ two teeth’ll make him come back to
die an’ be buried right here. You’ll see. It’s so. Just like I’m tellin’ you.
It’ll be dat way. Katy was a wise-minded ’oman.”
The boat moved steadily forward all the time, for Uncle Bill’s arms
didn’t slacken the oar’s paddling once.
As Breeze listened thoughtfully to all that was said, his eyes
wandered unseeing over the beauty that lay thick around him, for he
was trying to understand some of the things he had heard.
The rice-fields blurred by yellow sunshine were tinged with ripeness
and flecked with brilliant color. Purple shadows were cast by crimson
branches, scarlet berries sparkled on slender vines and adorning
gray thorny branches. The bright water, gay with reflections, ran
sober edges under blue cypress.
The tide of the year, more deliberate but as constant as the tide from
the sea, was almost full, almost at its height. It would soon pause,
mature and complete, its striving over, for a little rest; and start
ebbing.
A great owl, roused by the boat’s passing, spread out wide wings
and flew from the shadowy darkness of a dense moss-hung tree.
Marsh-hens, that couldn’t be seen, cackled out shrill strident notes
from the marsh-grown, water-covered mud flats. Solemn blue-and-
white herons stood motionless at the water’s edge, gravely watching
the boat. High overhead, thin lines of ducks sliced across the sky
with swift slashing wings. When the boat rounded a bend where the
creek met the river, Uncle Bill began a careful, precise paddling with
his one long oar, and with settled, even strokes thrust the boat
forward into the wide dark stream.
“For Gawd’s sake, be careful, Uncle! Don’ go too fast against dis
current. I’d sho’ hate to be turned over dis morning. Dat water looks
mighty cold.”
Sherry gave a shiver and laugh as he said it, but Uncle Bill’s reply
was full of reproach. Why would Sherry think of such a thing as
turning over? He was inviting trouble.
The boat had run silently for some little time, close to the river’s
bank, when Uncle Bill broke into a sputter of words. Breeze turned to
look at him. His eyes, two bright black berries in the dull black
surface of his skin, were fixed on something away ahead. Breeze
tried to see it too. He searched the distance ahead. But nothing
showed except miles of wide river swelled out beyond its banks into
the flat old rice-fields. Palmetto trees showed now and then among
the willows and cypresses. Low-lying marshy islands, fringed with
vine-covered scrubby bushes, were cut into patterns by narrow
creeks.
Sherry was watching the distance too. “Wha’ kind is dey, Uncle?” he
murmured.
“Bull-neck, son,” Uncle Bill answered promptly.
“I wish my eyes was trained to see good like your’n. I wonder why
dey ain’!”
“I dunno, son. I dunno. I reckon dey ain’ had to look hard as mine,”
and he chuckled with pleasure at the compliment Sherry paid him.
Uncle’s calm black face filled with a warm friendly smile. Uncle’s
bright eyes, keen and cold, flitted swiftly from Sherry’s face to
Breeze’s, then beyond them to the ducks he saw in the distance.
Breeze began to see more in Uncle Bill’s black features than he did
at first. They were more than wrinkled flesh that time had creased
and withered, for not only shrewdness, but wisdom and pity shone in
the clear-seeing eyes; and the old mouth, where so many teeth were
missing, tightened its lips in a way that meant more than caution and
prudence.
Breeze gazed at every bit of the surface ahead, starting with the
water where sunshine dazzled close beside the boat and ending
where the hazy sky dropped down to join the earth, but he couldn’t
see any ducks.
“Looka right yonder!” Uncle Bill pointed to direct his eyes and he
made out two tiny black specks side by side on the water.
“You must shoot dose two,” Sherry said. “It ain’t against de law to kill
bull-necks, and maybe dey’ll stay on de water until we get in
gunshot.”
“You better shoot ’em, Cun Sherry. I can’t hit ’em.” Breeze hesitated
although his heart was beating fit to burst with excitement at the
thought of shooting a gun.
“No, dem’s you’ ducks. You must kill ’em,” Sherry insisted. “If you do
like I tell you, you can’ miss em. I don’ mind breakin’ de law, so I’ll hit
de summer ducks and you kill de lawful ones.”
“I’m scared I’ll miss ’em.” Breeze’s voice quivered so shakily Sherry
laughed.
“No you won’t. I’ll tell you how to do,” he said gently.
Uncle Bill headed the boat straight for the two small dots which were
swimming toward it, and soon Breeze could see the gray of their
feathers and the bright orange color of their bills. They seemed not
to know their danger even when Uncle Bill stopped paddling and
Sherry whispered to Breeze.
“Cock your gun now and hold em close up to you’ shoulder. Look
straight at de duck you want to kill and pull de front trigger.”
Breeze did just as Sherry told him, but the drake he aimed at sat
quite motionless on the water, as if he had not even heard the gun’s
explosion.
“Fine, son!” Sherry exclaimed. “He didn’ know wha’ hit him. Now,
shoot de hen duck. Hold you’ gun up close to you’ shoulder, den look
straight at em an’ pull de back trigger.”
Breeze’s fingers were trembling but he shot again, and the hen duck
made wild splutterings on the water.
“Po’ creeter! You hit em, but you got to shoot em again. Put us up a
li’l’ closer, Uncle. Load you’ gun, Breeze.”
Breeze’s tense fingers shook as he unbreached his gun and
replaced the two empty, smoking shells with heavy new ones. As the
boat swung near to the wounded duck that swam round and round
its dead mate, Sherry spoke to him sharply.
“Hurry up! Shoot em again!”
How could he do it? The poor wounded fowl was fluttering in agony
now.
“Quit you’ triflin’, boy!” Sherry ordered sternly. “Put em out o’ dat
misery.”
Breeze’s fingers tightened on the trigger and the gray-feathered
body quivered into bloody shreds as the swift lead from his gun tore
through it. Breeze felt wretched. Killing that duck gave him no
pleasure.
Uncle Bill paddled up close to the two dead bodies and Sherry
picked them up out of the water.
“Dey’s plump!” he commented as his fingers examined the breasts to
see.
“We has all de ducks we can eat now, but dis boy ought to shoot one
flyin’ befo’ we go home.”
“Den we’ll go on,” Uncle agreed.
They crossed the river and entered a creek much like the first one. It
branched right and left, becoming narrower all the time. Uncle Bill
began a stealthy creeping around the wooded bends. Sometimes
ducks were there, sometimes not. Breeze shot wildly each time one
rose. Sherry declared he killed two of those that fell. He may have,
he didn’t know. Sherry may have just said so to encourage him.
This was a strange world to Breeze. Gray water, unfamiliar trees,
long stretches of ripening marsh grass where odd-looking birds
made outlandish cries as they passed.
Uncle Bill paddled steadily on with a measured stroke. Past islands
lined with ranges of sand-hills where tall pines above the willows
stood against the sky. Through channels choked with weeds where
white cranes fed. Long streets of water, curving, dustless, houseless,
settled only by light and shade and the images of trees and clouds
and sun they faithfully reflected.
At a sudden “S-st” from Uncle Bill, Breeze looked at the low wooded
hillside and glimpsed a doe, followed by her fawn. They had come
down to the water’s edge to drink. Sheer terror held them rigid for a
brief instant and then both were gone.
“Jedus, Sherry,” Uncle Bill chided. “You could ’a’ got all two if you
had ’a’ tried!”
“I didn’ want dem,” Sherry answered. “We’s done killed enough for
one day. My mammy says if you kill too much o’ t’ings at a time you’ll
git so you smell like death. I don’ want to. I kills a while and den I
stops.”
Uncle Bill laughed, and the silence was so deep that his voice
echoed and reechoed.
Breeze was glad the killing was over, for he’d rather hear the two
men talk than to see Sherry kill.
The boat flowed evenly, almost silently, over the water’s smooth
surface. Uncle Bill kept it close to the bank to avoid the full sweep of
the current in the middle of the stream.
Great dark birds, startled by its passing so close to their homes, flew
up out of the water with a loud flopping of wings, but there was little
talk for the rest of the way.
The water slipped swiftly past them. The small whirling circles made
by Uncle Bill’s paddle widened until they reached the bank’s willowy
edges where vines and bushes wound tight together, choking and
strangling one another as they wrestled for a narrow foothold.
When Uncle Bill paused and cleared his throat Breeze knew he was
going to ask Sherry a question.
“How come you don’ like April, here lately?”
“Who say I don’ like em?” Sherry answered.
“I say so.”
Sherry’s white grin was cold. Hard. His answer slow in coming.
“April’s legs is most too long fo’ de foreman of a big plantation like
Blue Brook.”
“Wha’ you mean, son?”
“Dey kin tote him too far f’om home sometimes.”
“You mean April kin walk too far atter dark?”
“Yes, suh,” Uncle Bill sighed.
“Gawd is de one made ’em long. April ain’ had nothin’ to do wid dat.
Gawd made you’ own not so short, Sherry. Don’ fo’git dat.”
Sherry said no more and Uncle Bill worked faster with his paddling.
The afternoon sun was a great red ball floating among thin smoky
clouds. A light haze was creeping out from underneath the trees on
the banks of the creeks. The shrill call of a cicada rose, swelled into
quick breathless notes, faded away, then was taken up, answered by
a mate. Yellow sunshine fell between lacy blue shadows cast by
cypress trees. Dark green thickets crouched wet-footed, beside
narrow winding paths of tide water.
The marshes were buried. All the sticky miry mud exposed by the
morning was hidden. Through old flood-gates the rising water
gurgled and bubbled into forsaken rice-fields. Grass, vines, trees,
bushes rank, thorny and fetid, crowded and trampled one another,
trying to gain a deeper, stronger foothold down in the broken dikes.
Breeze gazed around him with long looks. As far as his eyes could
see the earth was flooded. Wasted. Unsown. Abandoned.
Uncle Bill sighed. It made him sad to think how the tide had
destroyed the work of years. At first it crept timidly in, hardly enough
for its shallow trickling to show. But it grew bolder and stronger as it
took back the rich land, acre by acre, until it owned them all. All!
The first white men who came here found the whole face of the earth
covered with a thick forest growth of cypress and gum and ash,
matted, tangled with powerful vines, and held by the tides that rose
and fell as they do now, twice every day. Those men bought slaves,
Breeze’s and Sherry’s and his own great-grandfathers and mothers,
African people fresh from the Guinea Coast. The slaves diked and
banked up the land so the forest growth could be removed, then they
canaled and ditched and banked it into smaller well-drained tracts
which were planted with rice. And rice made the plantation owners
rich.
For years the lands were held by children and grandchildren of those
first settlers, but nearly every old plantation home has been burned
or sold or abandoned. The rich rice-fields are deserted. The old
dikes and flood-gates that stood as guardians are broken and rotted.
The tide rolls over all as it did before the land was ever cleared. It
has taken back its own.
A whistle not far away gave a shrill ugly shriek. “Lawd, de boat is
lated to-day! Wha’ time it is, Uncle Bill?”
Uncle cast a quick glance up at the sun. “A li’l’ after four, son.”
Sherry considered. “De boat ain’ but two hours lated. Pretty good, for
dat old slow coach, enty?”
“Kin you tell de time, Breeze?”
“I kin tell if it ain’ cloudy, neither rainin’, in de daytime.”
Sherry said there were many other ways to tell; the tide runs true,
rain or shine, morning-glories and lots of other flowers open and
close by the time. Big Sue’s yard was full of four-o’clocks. They’d be
wide open now. Birds change their songs with the turn of the
afternoon. “Listen! You can hear a red-bird whistlin’ right now. Dis
morning he went so——” Sherry pursed his lips and mimicked a bar
of bird song.
“Now e says to dis——” And he whistled a few notes that the bird
himself echoed. “Dat bird knows it’s past four. A red-bird knows de
time every bit as good as Uncle. Grass blades moves wid de day
too. Dey leans dis way an’ dat to get de light. A lot o’ t’ings is got mo’
sense dan people, enty, Uncle?”
“Sho’!” Uncle Bill declared. “If you watch t’ings close, you’ll git wise.
Wise! Take Uncle Isaac; e can’ read readin’ or either writin’ but he
knows more’n any school-teacher or either preacher dat ever came
to Blue Brook.”
“Wha’ de name o’ de church Uncle Isaac b’longs to?”
Uncle Bill smiled gently. “Po’ Uncle! E j’ined de white folks ch’uch
yonder at de gate, long time ago. Dat’s named ’Piscopalian. Den e
went to town on de boat an’ seen a white folks’ chu’ch named de
Presbeteerin. Uncle mixed de two togedder. E calls hese’f a
’Piscoteerin’. Po’ Uncle! If e don’ mind, e’s gwine die in sin yet. You
boys mustn’ wait too long to pray. Pray soon. Git religion young. It’s a
heap easier den. I waited so long I mighty nigh missed gittin’ it
myse’f. But I ruther have religion dan to have all Uncle Isaac’s
knowledge. E kin put a ‘hand’ on anybody long as dey’s in dis world.
E kin take a ‘spell’ off anybody long as dey’s dis side o’ de grave. But
dat ain’ so much after all. Dis life is short. It’s de other side o’ Jordan
we got to fix for. Dem sweet fields in Eden, yonder in Canaan’s land.
Dat’s de country I’m aimin’ to reach. You boys must try to reach em
too.”
“Uncle, you believe any white folks is in Heaben?”
“Gawd knows, son. White folks is mighty smart people. Dey knows a
lot o’ tricks we don’ know.”
 XIII
THE QUILTING

Before day was clean Big Sue got up out of bed and went to the
front door to look at the weather. The cool air was soft and still, trees
and birds were asleep. The earth itself was resting quietly, for the
sun tarried late in his bed. The stars had not yet faded from the clear
open sky, but Big Sue was full of excitement. Only a few hours more
and she must have everything ready at Maum Hannah’s for the
quilting to commence.
Her own big room was almost large enough for a quilting, but it was
better to go to Maum Hannah’s. The meeting benches could be
brought in from under the house where they stayed, to make seats
enough for the company, and Maum Hannah’s quilting poles stood
always in the corner waiting for work to do. Plenty of pots sat on her
hearth and two big ones out in the yard besides. Most of the
plantation quiltings were held at Maum Hannah’s house, the same
as the night prayer-meetings.
The raw rations were all ready to cook. Plenty of rice and cornmeal.
White flour and coffee and sugar from the store. She’d pot-roast the
ducks, and fry the fish, and make the turtle into a stew. She’d roast
the potatoes in the ashes. The corn-pone would bake brown and
nice in the big oven on the hearth. With some nice fat white-flour
biscuit to eat last with the coffee, she would have enough to fill
everybody full.
Breeze must get up and hustle! She called him and he tried to raise
up his drowsy head, but sleep had it too heavy for his strength to lift.
If she’d only let him take one more little nap! But she shook him
soundly by the shoulder. To-day was the day for the quilting. He must
get up and dress, and get some fat kindling wood to start a fire under
both the big pots in Maum Hannah’s yard. He’d have to fetch water