Summary During the first decades of the sixteenth century, several animals described and viewed as exotic by the Europeans were regularly shipped from India to Lisbon. This paper addresses the relevance of these ‘new’ animals to knowledge and visual representations of the natural world. It discusses their cultural and scientific meaning in Portuguese travel literature of the period as well as printed illustrations, charts and tapestries. This paper suggests that Portugal did not make the most of its unique position in (...) bringing news and animals from Asia. This was either because secrecy associated with trade and military interests hindered the diffusion of illustrations presented in Portuguese travel literature or because the illustrations commissioned by the nobility were represented on expensive media such as parchments and tapestries and remained treasured possessions. However, the essay also proposes that the Portuguese contributed to a new sense of the experience and meaning of nature and that they were crucial mediators in access to new knowledge and new ways of representing the natural world during this period. (shrink)

Durante todo o século XVIII, existiu um grande fascínio por seres humanos hermafroditas. Este interesse encontra-se patenteado nas suas inúmeras exibiçōes públicas e nas vánas dissertaçōes académicas sobre o tema. Neste período, e em contraste com o anterior, a existência de seres humanos hermafroditas passou a ser questionada por membros da comunidade médica da época incluindo James Parsons, para o qual a figura do hermafrodita deveria ser erradicada do entendimento anatómico da diferença sexual. Albrecht von Haller nāo ficou indiferente à (...) controvérsia sobre a existência de hermafroditas humanos. Este artigo tem como objectivo apresentar e debater a sua visāo sobre esta temática, primeiramente apresentada na sua dissertaçāo sobre hermafroditas datada de 1752 e depois num artigo da Encyclopédie de 1777. De que modo a sua abordagem do problema foi distinta da dos seus contemporâneos? Qual foi o seu contúbuto para o entendimento da ambiguidade sexual? Haller pnvilegiou o estudo de homens com deformaçōes genitais habitualmente descrítos como hermafroditas mas que, no seu entender, deveriam ser considerados verdadeiros homens com plenos direitos legais e sociais. Mais ainda, Haller não tinha uma visāo redutora sobre o problema da ambiguidade sexual. No seu entender, os seres humanos hermafroditas, embora raros, poderíam existir. Afinal, o estudo da natureza mostrava o quāo ela era fértil na produçãāo de novas figuras e formas. Throughout the eighteenth century, there was a great fascination with human hermaphrodites. This interest is evident in their frequent public exhibitions and in the numerous academic dissertations published on the subject. In contrast with the previous period where men, women and hermaphrodites where thought to exist, the very existence of the latter was called into question by some members of the medical community including James Parsons for whom the the category of hermaphrodite should be eradicated from the understanding of sexual diference. Albrecht von Haller was not indifferent to the controversy on the existence of human hermaphrodites. This article is concerned with his views on the issue first presented in his dissertation on hermaphrodites and later in the French Encyclopédie . To what extent were his views on the subject different from the ones argued by other anatomists of the period? What was his contribute to the understanding of sexual ambiguity? In this paper, I will argue that Haller was especially concerned with men with genital deformations who, in his view, should not be described as hermaphrodites and should have the same social rights as other men. Moreover, Haller had an open view on the issue of the existence of human hermaphrodites. Although he considered the possibility of their existence rare, he did not deny the vast potential of nature in producing new shapes and forms. (shrink)

Jan Bondeson, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities (London and New York: Cornell University Press, 1997), ix + 250 pp. ISBN 1-86064-228-4 US$29.95 £23.51. -/- Jan Bondeson, The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999) xi + 315 pp. ISBN 0-8014-3609-5 Hb £22.50.