Article ID: CBB917614120

John Kay’s The craft in danger (1817): Graphic satire and natural history in nineteenth-century Edinburgh (2022)

unapi

In the early nineteenth century, the pre-eminence of lecturers at the University of Edinburgh medical school faced challenge from successful extra-mural teachers, like the anatomist John Barclay (1758–1826). Wishing to maintain the University’s reputation, in 1816 Edinburgh Town Council proposed the institution of a new chair in Comparative Anatomy and Veterinary Surgery: a proposal which the University chose to reject. These events provided the subject to John Kay’s (1742–1826) satirical print The craft in danger (1817), which accused Alexander Monro tertius (1773–1859), Thomas Charles Hope (1766–1844) and Robert Jameson (1774–1854) of attempting to hold back the progress of knowledge in the interest of personal profit. Kay staged a mock battle in which Barclay charges the entrance of the University mounted upon an elephant skeleton; Hope attempts to topple him using an insecurely anchored rope; Monro tries to fend him off with a bone, while Jameson, seated astride a walrus, brandishes a narwhal tusk. The animal specimens pictured represent identifiable objects, then in the museum collections of Barclay and Jameson – the depiction of which reflects the colonial networks of natural history collecting that brought them to Edinburgh. Kay’s satirical print thus maintains a valuable record of the culture of natural history in the city, being facilitated to do so by periodicals like The Scots Magazine, and Edinburgh Literary Miscellany through which new knowledge was actively transmitted.

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Authors & Contributors
Jenkins, Bill
Badía, Sara
Corsi, Pietro
Harrison, Simon
Jacyna, L. S.
Longair, Sarah
Journals
Archives of Natural History
Journal of the History of Biology
Journal for the History of Knowledge
Annals of Science: The History of Science and Technology
British Journal for the History of Science
Bulletin for the History of Chemistry
Publishers
Berghahn Books
Manchester University Press
McGill-Queen's University Press
Science History Publications
University of Georgia Press
University of Hawai'i Press
Concepts
Natural history
Collectors and collecting
Colonialism
Museums
Knowledge circulation
Birds
People
Jameson, Robert
Bennett, John Hughes
Brewster, David
Brooks, Allan Cyril
Garner, Richard Lynch
Grant, Robert Edmond
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century, early
20th century
Places
Edinburgh (Scotland)
Great Britain
Scotland
Africa
Australia
Canada
Institutions
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh Physiological Society
Museo Calderini
Museo di Scienze Naturali di Torino
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