Aries in medieval manuscripts ♈🐏 Medieval artists showed Aries as a ram, the first sign of the zodiac, marking the start of the astrological year in spring. Shelfmarks: MS. Rawl. D. 1220 fol. 003v MS. Bodl. 266 fol. 108r MS. Add. A. 46 fol. 002r MS. Rawl. D. 939 fol. 2br

My wonderful if struggling department of History and Classical Studies is crowd funding today with all proceeds donated (march 11) being matched in collaboration with #McGill24 If you are a McGill alumni and/or wish to donate to help the next gen of historians/classicists excel today is the day!

Check out my paper at #RSA2026 !

Valentine’s Day baking ideas from Diderot's Encyclopédie (1763-1777) #c18th #foodhistory

Very excited for this years McGill-Queen’s Graduate Conference keynote presentation by Laila Parsons! If you’re in the Montreal area, please join!

Just a regular fox taking an #earlymodern Uber. Nothing to see here. #skystorians

Early modern medical remedy of “tobacco, six shillings of beere, and a walk” ok so they cracked it. 1625 and they cracked it.

“Rather than relying on an implant or a patient's own body fat to add volume to hips or augment breasts, alloClae — which can cost as much as $100,000 per procedure — uses donor fat from a cadaver as a first-of-its-kind body filler.”

In today’s post, Avery Monette (@averymonette.bsky.social) discusses the Nazi occupation of Winnipeg.

Canadian professors: Do you have grad students who need a conference under their belt? Grad students: want to share your work in a friendly and collegial environment? Submit an abstract and join us in February!

We have a new, excellent post up by @donnie-m.bsky.social on Estonia as a space of economic experimentation in the late Soviet period www.peripheralhistories.co.uk/post/a-labor...

Are you a graduate student? Check out the 2026 McGill-Queen’s Graduate Conference Call for Papers! Abstracts are due November 28!

Pedro de Camprobín, Death and the Gentleman, c. 1670 (Hospital de la Caridad, Seville). In this unique painting, Death seems to be in the guise of a prostitute, who were often veiled in 17th-century Seville 🎃💀 #earlymodern

Nobody with a conscience would greenlight this monumental waste of energy. Delusional, sociopathic behaviour.

In today’s post, Abigail Beckett (@abbybeckett.bsky.social) explores the Indigenous and colonial history behind Jean de Brebeuf’s Feast Day, celebrated on September 26th.

2/3 comps exams done…thank god my puppy is taking on the exhaustion for me

Paracelsus would love My Chemical Romance

!! activehistory.ca/blog/2025/06...

The Instruments of Human Sustenance/ Humani Victus Instrumenta: Cooking after 1569 In the manner of Giuseppe Arcimboldo (Met Museum) A riot of kitchen paraphenalia here...

Very early modern corpse medicine coded

This is more of a "local lore relic," but there's a Yukon bar called the Sourdough Saloon that serves a shot containing the preserved toe of a locally infamous 1920s-era bootlegger (allegedly). There's one rule: "You can drink it fast, you can drink it slow, but your lips must touch the toe"

“Hicks found no record of the person whose remains the skull-cup was made from…carbon dating showed the skull is about 225 years old. Its size and circumstantial evidence suggest it came from the Caribbean and possibly belonged to an enslaved woman, he added.” www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

If anyone feels inclined to share: I’m looking for instances of saintly relic consumption (eaten or drank)!

Pioneering entomologist & scientific illustrator Maria Sibylla Merian was born #OTD in 1647. In 1699 Merian set off on the first-ever purely scientific expedition to the Dutch colony of Suriname, where she documented intricate plant-insect interactions with beautiful artwork and clarity. (📸BHL)

Busy all week preparing for my #histmed lecture next Wed in Montreal. Big thoughts about the science I'm interrogating (& critiquing), the medical & biological research I continually rely on, but also the humanistic principles that guide my work as a historian. And the death of my own discipline:

All of them?!

It’s 2025: you’re low on coin. You spent your day consuming elixirs taking notes on the praxis, techne and episteme of the writers from centuries ago. Your guild underpays you. Your master doesn’t understand the current prices of living. You own no land, the inn where you stay is beyond your means.

I am so, so tired. And I know you are, too. Here's “Death blowing bubbles,” 18th century. The bubbles symbolize life's fragility. This plaster work appears on the ceiling of Holy Grave Chapel in Michaelsberg Abbey, Bamberg, Germany. After the monastery’s dissolution, it became a hospital.

Contrary to popular belief, comps are in fact not the “best times of your phd”

Trade card of Richard Middleton, coffin maker and undertaker - 19th century.

Rachel Anderson explores an untapped archive of petitions for poor assistance following plague outbreaks in England during the early 17th century in her article “The Lancashire Plague Petitions,” using tools of micro-history to emphasize the importance of community and external assistance. 🗃️

“Wound Man” is an illustration which first appeared in European surgical texts during the Middle Ages. It laid out schematically the various wounds a person might suffer in battle or in accidents, with accompanying text stating treatments. Tag yourself as a wound ahead of the holidays!

If you're having a midweek slump please enjoy some colourful anatomy from the very large 'Anatomical Atlas of the Human Body in Natural Size' (1836). Pencil for scale!

Medical historian here to remind you of the benefits of #vaccines! This is the final stage of tetanus when nerves fire continuously & body contorts into agonizing posture known as opisthotonus. The mastication muscles clamp down to form the hallmark lockjaw. A vaccine didn't appear until 1924.

Please share the CFP for our conference: 'Bodies and Environments in the Early Modern World'. Our keynotes are Marcy Norton @marcynorton.bsky.social (Pennsylvania) & Sara Miglietti (Warburg Institute). Join us 9-10 June at JRRIL, Manchester. Further details at: sites.manchester.ac.uk/sleeping-wel...

It's #MementoMoriMonday! Here's a silver watch in the form of a human skull, c. 1660. The watch is inscribed with: vita fugitur (life is fleeting), aesterna respice (look down upon a fallen thing), caduca despice (look upon eternity), incertita hora (death/hour is uncertain)

"The Alchemist", a painting from Mattheus van Helmont from mid seventeenth century, is rich in detail, and full of #earlymodern paper details. Here is a 🧵, dear #skystorians, unfortunately not about the large écorché figure, a distillation apparatus over a fire, but about #paperhistory. Enjoy.

On the shelf, it would look like an ordinary book, but when opened you’d find drawers to hide poison. The inside cover has a woodcut from Vesalius’ De Fabrica. The glass bottle says STATUT UM EST HOMINIBUS SEMEI MOR - it is well established that all people die once. It was made in Germany in 1682