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https://micromasters.mit.edu/dedp/
The MicroMasters credential in Data, Economics, and Development Policy equips learners with the practical skills and theoretical knowledge to tackle some of the most pressing challenges facing developing countries and the world’s poor. Through a series of five online courses and in-person exams learners will gain a strong foundation in microeconomics, development economics, probability and statistics, and engage with cutting-edge research in the field. The program is unique in its focus on the practicalities of running randomized evaluations to assess the effectiveness of social programs and its emphasis on hands-on skills in data analysis.
The program is co-designed and run by MIT’s Department of Economics and the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a global leader in conducting randomized evaluations to test and improve the effectiveness of programs aimed at reducing poverty. It is intended for learners who are interested in building a full set of tools and skills required for data analysis in the social sciences, understanding the problems facing world’s poor, and learning how to design and evaluate social policies that strive to solve them.
Learners who successfully complete the five MicroMasters courses and their corresponding in-person exams will be eligible to apply to MIT’s new blended Master program in Data, Economics, and Development Policy. If accepted, students will earn MIT credit for the MicroMasters courses, and will be able to pursue an accelerated on-campus Master’s degree at MIT.
How the DEDP MicroMasters works
dedp-hiw1.png Take five online courses on edX.
dedp-hiw2.png Pass a proctored exam for each course at testing facilities around the world.
dedp-hiw3.png Earn a MicroMasters credential from MITx!
dedp-hiw4.png On completion, you may apply to the Master’s program at MIT!
Pricing
The cost of courses in this program varies depending on your ability to pay. You can start by auditing classes for free and upgrade at a later point. Learn more about course pricing.
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Who should enroll?
Policymakers and practitioners from governments, NGOs, international aid agencies, foundations, and other entities in the development sector
Academics and evaluators looking to re-tool and apply data-driven perspectives to social and development programs
Students interested in pursuing admissions to graduate programs in development economics, public policy, political science, or related fields
Social entrepreneurs, managers and researchers in the development sector
What you will learn
To identify and analyze the root causes of underdevelopment using principles of economics
To interpret the findings of empirical research that evaluates the effectiveness of anti-poverty strategies, policies, and interventions
Practical knowledge on how to design and implement rigorous randomized evaluations and other econometric methods of evaluating policies and programs
Tools of comparative cost-effectiveness analysis for informed policy-making
Fundamentals of microeconomics, development economics, probability, and statistics
Hands-on skills in data analysis using the R programming language
The Andean Wonder Drug
Cinchona Bark and Imperial Science in the Spanish Atlantic, 1630–1800
Crawford, Matthew James
In the eighteenth century, malaria was a prevalent and deadly disease, and the only effective treatment was found in the Andean forests of Spanish America: a medicinal bark harvested from cinchona trees that would later give rise to the antimalarial drug quinine. The Andean Wonder Drug uses the story of cinchona bark to demonstrate how the imperial politics of knowledge in the Spanish Atlantic ultimately undermined efforts to transform European science into a tool of empire.
Kindle eBook Available
Nook eBook Available
Listen to Matthew Crawford's interview (podcast) about The Andean Wonder Drug on the New Books Network web site (scroll to bottom of the NBN page for the interview link)
Matthew James Crawford is assistant professor of history at Kent State University.
"Crawford's scholarly study adds to our knowledge of the history of cinchona and of the Enlightenment, but probably its greatest contribution is to document in detail the relationship between science and empire through showing how knowledge was actually acquired and disseminated on the ground within specific economic and political contexts. It is a model for future studies of this kind and a significant contribution to understanding the nature of early modern science."—Journal of the History of Medicine
"Boldly challenges historiographical consensus. Crawford offers a sweeping counternarrative to any simplified account of the rise of scientific modernity as a tool of empire . . . Crawford's illuminating analysis shows that science and knowledge never worked as an outside, adjudicating arbiter." —History of Science
“Excellently thought out and clearly written. An excellent book.”--Choice
“Instead of taking at face value conventional claims that the natural sciences offered an objective method for evaluating natural resources, Matthew Crawford convincingly shows how scientific assessment actively produced political quarrels about who could determine the efficacy of new drugs and how. The Andean Wonder Drug is a model of colonial science studies that makes essential reading for historians of the Atlantic World and early modern science and medicine.”—James Delbourgo, Rutgers University
“The Andean Wonder Drug is an illuminating study of the Spanish Empire’s efforts to secure monopoly control over the cinchona tree and its bark. The project ultimately failed, but Crawford’s deft analysis offers fresh perspectives into the intimate relationship between early modern sciences and empires, local and global knowledge, and the agents involved in the production of knowledge about quina within the early modern Spanish Atlantic World. At its core, this meticulous analysis is a studied reflection on the question of ‘who speaks for nature?’”—Susan Deans-Smith, University of Texas at Austin
“Crawford’s expert account of the Spanish Empire’s struggles to control the cinchona tree and its bark reveals profound links between science, politics, and knowledge production in the Atlantic World. This book is an impressive contribution to existing scholarship on early modern science, early modern Spain, and Atlantic World history. Very interesting, well documented, and fun to read.”—Antonio Barrera, author of Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution
Complete Description
Table of Contents
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For All of Humanity
Mesoamerican and Colonial Medicine in Enlightenment Guatemala
By Martha Few
Smallpox, measles, and typhus. The scourges of lethal disease—as threatening in colonial Mesoamerica as in other parts of the world—called for widespread efforts and enlightened attitudes to
Few's work adds to the public health historiography by revealing that medical pluralisms shaped health practices in Guatemala beginning in the late 1600s. She excels at breaking down complicated arguments into an approachable text that students will appreciate.
—Choice
Serves as an important contribution to the growing literature on medicine and science in the Spanish empire and an important corrective to this literature, which has tended to focus on imperial directives with less attention to local initiatives.
—American Historical Review
In this well-researched study, Martha Few presents a detailed account of the responses to smallpox, typhus, and other epidemic illnesses in colonial Guatemala.
—Bulletin of the History of Medicine
For All of Humanity serves as an important contribution to the growing literature on medicine and science in the Spanish empire and an important corrective to this literature, which has tended to focus on imperial directives with less attention to local initiatives.
—American Historical Review
Martha Few has opened a fresh window into the new knowledge of the Enlightenment as it filtered into the Americas and was impacted and nurtured by the findings of creole intellectuals and native healers as they faced the challenges of epidemic disease and public health.
—Noble David Cook, author of Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492-1650
A rich and complex picture of the ways various groups engaged in efforts to prevent and control epidemic disease, improve health, and save (and at times baptize) the lives of those facing near-certain death.
—Adam Warren, author of Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru: Population Growth and the Bourbon Reforms
battle the centuries-old killers of children and adults. Even before edicts from Spain crossed the Atlantic, colonial elites oftentimes embraced medical experimentation and reform in the name of the public good, believing it was their moral responsibility to apply medical innovations to cure and prevent disease. Their efforts included the first inoculations and vaccinations against smallpox, new strategies to protect families and communities from typhus and measles, and medical interventions into pregnancy and childbirth.
For All of Humanity examines the first public health campaigns in Guatemala, southern Mexico, and Central America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Martha Few pays close attention to Indigenous Mesoamerican medical cultures, which not only influenced the shape and scope of those regional campaigns but also affected the broader New World medical cultures. The author reconstructs a rich and complex picture of the ways colonial doctors, surgeons, Indigenous healers, midwives, priests, government officials, and ordinary people engaged in efforts to prevent and control epidemic disease.
Few's analysis weaves medical history and ethnohistory with social, cultural, and intellectual history. She uses prescriptive texts, medical correspondence, and legal documents to provide rich ethnographic descriptions of Mesoamerican medical cultures, their practitioners, and regional pharmacopeia that came into contact with colonial medicine, at times violently, during public health campaigns.
A Culture’s Catalyst
Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada
Fannie Kahan (Author), Erika Dyck (Editor)
In 1956, pioneering psychedelic researchers Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond were invited to join members of the Red Pheasant First Nation near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to participate in a peyote ceremony hosted by the Native American Church of Canada.
Inspired by their experience, they wrote a series of essays explaining and defending the consumption of peyote and the practice of peyotism. They enlisted the help of Hoffer’s sister, journalist Fannie Kahan, and worked closely with her to document the religious ceremony and write a history of peyote, culminating in a defense of its use as a healing and spiritual agent.
Although the text shows its mid-century origins, with dated language and at times uncritical analysis, it advocates for Indigenous legal, political and religious rights and offers important insights into how psychedelic researchers, who were themselves embattled in debates over the value of spirituality in medicine, interpreted the peyote ceremony. Ultimately, they championed peyotism as a spiritual practice that they believed held distinct cultural benefits.
A Culture’s Catalyst revives a historical debate. Revisiting it now encourages us to reconsider how peyote has been understood and how its appearance in the 1950s tested Native-newcomer relations and the Canadian government’s attitudes toward Indigenous religious and cultural practices.
REVIEWS
“A fascinating glimpse of psychiatry’s encounter with peyote and First Nations cultures, Fannie Kahan’s A Culture’s Catalyst is by turns patronizing and sympathetic, supportive and paternalistic. On one level Kahan’s collection of essays by cutting-edge mental health experts is both a critique of colonialism and a defense of their own embrace of psychoactive treatments. On a deeper level it is an intriguing illustration of First Nations’ savvy appropriation of elite power and influence to protect cultural and religious rites. It will definitely find a place on my bookshelf and syllabus.”
– Maureen Lux, Department of History, Brock University, author of award-winning Medicine that Walks: Disease, Medicine, and Canadian Plains Native People, 1880–1940 and the forthcoming Separate Beds: A History of Indian Hospitals in Canada, 1920s to 1980s.
“An extraordinary and unreservedly recommended study.”
– Helen Dumont, Midwest Book Review
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Fannie Kahan (1922–1978) was born in southern Saskatchewan. She was a journalist and the author of a number of books, including Brains and Bricks: The History of the Yorkton Psychiatric Centre (1965) and A Different Drummer: The History of the Saskatchewan Psychiatric Nurses’ Association (1973).
Erika Dyck is a historian of health, medicine, and Canadian society at the University of Saskatchewan and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine.She is the author of Psychedelic Psychiatry: LSD on the Canadian Prairies. Visit Erika’s website.
BOOK DETAILS
A Culture’s Catalyst: Historical Encounters with Peyote and the Native American Church in Canada
Fannie Kahan (Author), Erika Dyck (Editor)
Published May 2016, 176 pages
Paper, ISBN: 978-0-88755-814-6, 6 × 9, $27.95
Topic(s): Indigenous Studies, Medical History, Religion
Aref Abu-Rabia , Indigenous Medicine among the Bedouin in the Middle East , New York: Berghahn Books, 2015. Pp. 232. £60. 978 1 78238 689 6.
Adam Guerin
Soc Hist Med (2017) 30 (3): 708-709. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkw138
Published: 12 January 2017
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Aref Abu-Rabia’s Indigenous Medicine among the Bedouin in the Middle East is a work of synthesis based on anthropological research on the ‘healing practices, health situation, and environmental and cultural origins of perceptions of disease among Bedouin tribes of the twentieth century’ (p. 1) in the Middle East and North Africa. The book also treats questions of access and the perceived value of state health services in countries with transhumant, pastoral and recently-settled Bedouin communities. Abu-Rabia’s expertise stems from years of research rendered through a transdisciplinary methodology that blends anthropological, historical and sociological perspectives. The result is a fascinating account of the culture of healing in diverse Bedouin societies of the region.
The book is divided into four largely stand-alone chapters that blend descriptive and analytical approaches. The first chapter...
Anne Stobart, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England
INDIGENOUS MEDICINE AMONG THE BEDOUIN IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Aref Abu-Rabia
232 pages, 11 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-78238-689-6 $95.00/£67.00 Hb Published (October 2015)
eISBN 978-1-78238-690-2 eBook
Modern medicine has penetrated Bedouin tribes in the course of rapid urbanization and education, but when serious illnesses strike, particularly in the case of incurable diseases, even educated people turn to traditional medicine for a remedy. Over the course of 30 years, the author gathered data on traditional Bedouin medicine among pastoral-nomadic, semi-nomadic, and settled tribes. Based on interviews with healers, clients, and other active participants in treatments, this book will contribute to renewed thinking about a synthesis between traditional and modern medicine — to their reciprocal enrichment.
Aref Abu-Rabia is an Anthropologist at the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben-Gurion University. His research and publications focus on the Middle East, North Africa and Islamic communities in the West.
Subject: Medical Anthropology
Area: Middle East & Israel
LC: DS36.9.B4A38 2015
BISAC: SOC057000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Disease & Health Issues; SOC002000 SOCIAL SCIENCE/Anthropology/General
BIC: VXHT Traditional medicine & herbal remedies; PSXM Medical anthropology
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Health and Health Services among the Bedouin in the Middle East
Chapter 2. The Treatment of Human Ailments — Part A
Chapter 3. The Treatment of Human Ailments — Part B
Chapter 4. “Don’t Touch My Body”: The Qarina and Bedouin Women’s Fertility
Bibliography
Index
Published: 08-09-2016
Format: PDF eBook (?)
Edition: 1st
Extent: 304
ISBN: 9781472580368
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Illustrations: 12 bw illus
RRP: £21.99
Online price: £19.79
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About Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England
How did 17th-century families in England perceive their health care needs? What household resources were available for medical self-help? To what extent did households make up remedies based on medicinal recipes?
Drawing on previously unpublished household papers ranging from recipes to accounts and letters, this original account shows how health and illness were managed on a day-to-day basis in a variety of 17th-century households. It reveals the extent of self-help used by families, explores their favourite remedies and analyses differences in approaches to medical matters. Anne Stobart illuminates cultures of health care amongst women and men, showing how 'kitchin physick' related to the business of medicine, which became increasingly commercial and professional in the 18th century.
Table of contents
Table of Contents
Introduction: Household Health Care Matters
Section 1: Information
1. 'The danger is over': News About the Sick
2. Medicines or Remedies: Recipes for Health and Illness
Section 2: Resources
3. Early Modern Spending on Health Care
4. Animal, Vegetable and Mineral: Medicinal Ingredients
5. 'For to make the ointment': Kitchen Physick
Section 3: Practice
6. Therapeutics in the Family
7. 'I troble noe body with my Complaints': Chronic Disorders
Conclusion
Appendix of Household Accounts
Glossary of Ingredients
Bibliography
Index
Reviews
“Stobart, a leading scholar in the history of herbal medicine, has produced an excellent survey of how some early modern households managed their health on a day-to-day basis. Specifically, she seeks to question not only the prevailing assumption that self-help was the primary source of health care, but also what self-help actually meant in 17th-century England. To address this, the author divides household medicine into three themes that showcase the richness of her archival sources, namely, information (letters and recipe collections), resources (accounts, expense, equipment), and practice (treatment of children and chronic cases). This allows Stobart to convincingly argue that household health care was a complex mixture of therapeutic self-help and commercial and professional medicine. There was not necessarily a division or tension between women who made up recipes, apothecaries who supplied remedies, or physicians who prescribed them. As the century progressed, however, households purchased more and more ingredients rather than make up recipes. There was also a sharper delineation of medicine as not including foods. All of these conclusions raise the interesting issue of who held power in the 17th century when it came to domestic health care. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Most levels/libraries.” – CHOICE
“A fascinating book and one that will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of herbal medicine.” – Herbs
“… [A] must-read book. This well-written account, which effectively combines much sophisticated primary research with up-to-date historiographical engagement, is involved and elaborate, and yet at the same time it is easy to follow. I would recommend this book to undergraduates and graduate students alike, and it should find a place on many medical history library shelves.” – Pharmacy in History
“Anne Stobart offers us an engaging and penetrating analysis of how households in the sixteenth and seventeenth century dealt with sickness and ill health. Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England is an innovative and rich investigation of how domestic and commercial medical care were combined to treat diseases in this period. She reveals in unprecedented detail the rich currents of information that flowed between individuals and were transferred between generations. In an exemplary display of historical scholarship, Stobart brings together a broad array of sources that allow her to open the doors to the sick rooms and for the first time show us the range of ways families came together to compound medicines, share remedies and advice, and seek the help of doctors and apothecaries.” – Patrick Wallis, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Susan E. Cayleff , Nature’s Path: A History of Naturopathic Healing in America , Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Pp. 408. $39.95. ISBN 978 1 4214 1903 9.
Mike Saks
Soc Hist Med (2017) 30 (3): 711-712. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkx015
Published: 27 February 2017
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This well-written and researched book by Susan Cayleff, a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at San Diego State University, traces the labyrinthine history of naturopathy in the USA from its nineteenth-century origins to the present day. As such, it sheds light on the developing philosophy of a populist alternative medical approach based on prevention and healthy living, which positively links mind, body and spirit—as well as encompassing therapies that are aimed at enhancing innate healing processes. The naturopathic belief system is depicted as relating to a wide range of practices from exercise and healthy eating to sunshine and fresh air, with interconnections to specific methods like chiropractic, dietetics, herbalism, homeopathy, hydropathy, hypnotism, iridology, osteopathy and spiritual healing, amongst other therapeutic strands. In this maelstrom of diversity, naturopaths seem...
Nature's Path
A History of Naturopathic Healing in America
Susan E. Cayleff
TABLE OF CONTENTS
An alternative medical system emphasizing prevention through healthy living, positive mind-body-spirit strength, and therapeutics to enhance the body’s innate healing processes, naturopathy has gained legitimacy in recent years. In Nature’s Path—the first comprehensive book to examine the complex history and culture of American naturopathy—Susan E. Cayleff tells the fascinating story of the movement’s nineteenth-century roots.
While early naturopaths were sometimes divided by infighting, they all believed in the healing properties of water, nutrition, exercise, the sun, and clean, fresh air. Their political activism was vital to their professional formation: they loathed the invasive, depletive practices of traditional medicine and protested against medical procedures that addressed symptoms rather than disease causes while resisting processed foods, pharmaceuticals, environmental toxins, and atomic energy. Cayleff describes the development of naturopathy’s philosophies and therapeutics and details the efforts of its proponents to institutionalize the field. She recognizes notable naturopathic leaders, explores why women doctors, organizers, teachers, and authors played such a strong role in the movement, and identifies countercultural views—such as antivivisection, antivaccination, and vegetarianism—held by idealistic naturopaths from 1896 to the present.
Nature’s Path tracks a radical cultural critique, medical system, and way of life that links body, soul, mind, and daily purpose. It is a must-read for historians of medicine and scholars in women’s studies and political history, as well as for naturopaths and all readers interested in alternative medicine.
Susan E. Cayleff is a professor in the Department of Women’s Studies at San Diego State University. She is the author of Wash and Be Healed: The Water-Cure Movement and Women’s Health.
"An engaging history of naturopathy, this exhaustively researched and meticulously documented book is an invaluable contribution to nineteenth- and twentieth-century medical and social history."
— Barbara Melosh, author of The Physician's Hand: Nurses and Nursing in the Twentieth Century
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) issued its final report, including 94 ‘Calls to Action’ that aim to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of reconciliation. A number of these recommendations centre around health-related disparities, with the report calling upon the federal government to identify and close the gaps in health outcomes between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal communities. Focusing on the historical roots of these inequalities, Maureen Lux’s Separate Beds is a timely study that sheds new light on Canada’s history of racially-segregated care.
Building on existing histories of tuberculosis, sanitoria and studies on the experiences of indigenous peoples from the Canadian north in southern hospitals, Separate Beds offers the first comprehensive examination of both Indian Health Services (IHS) and its hospitals. Lux...
Pas pour tout le monde, bien sûr. Pour les départements universitaires, il s’agit (du moins à première vue) d’une manne tombée du ciel: des postes permanents, bien pourvus en fonds de recherche, qui viennent panser quelques-unes des plaies infligées par de longues années d’austérité. Difficile de les blâmer de vouloir en profiter.
Mais pour les chercheurs canadiens en début de carrière — doctorants, post-doctorants, chargés de cours et autres professionnels à statut précaire qui souhaitent accéder à des emplois universitaires stables — c’est une toute autre histoire. L’appel de candidatures pour une chaire en humanités numériques à l’Université du Québec à Trois-Rivièresexplique pourquoi :
« Conformément aux règles du Programme des chaires de recherche du Canada 150, l’UQTR n’acceptera que les candidatures de chercheurs qui travaillent et habitent à l’extérieur du Canada […] »
Il ne s’agit pas seulement d’un programme de discrimination positive envers un groupe (les chercheurs étrangers et les expatriés) qui n’a jamais subi de discrimination négative, ni même d’une étrange forme d’antipréférence nationale comme on n’en verrait jamais ailleurs. Les étudiants des universités canadiennes et les jeunes chercheurs qui n’ont pas eu la bonne idée de quitter le pays sont exclus d’emblée, totalement et irrévocablement. Peu importe la qualité de leur recherche. Peu importe qu’ils ou elles fassent partie de groupes historiquement sous-représentés dans l’enseignement supérieur. Peu importe que l'expatriation n'ait jamais constitué une option plausible pour bien des chercheurs canadiens, pour des raisons financières, familiales ou même professionnelles -- qui songerait à aller étudier les cultures des Premières nations ou des Inuit en Australie? Pour pousser le raisonnement jusqu’à la limite de l’absurde, si Chad Gaffield, récemment élevé au rang d’officier de l’Ordre du Canada pour sa contribution à l’avancement des humanités numériques, était intéressé par le poste à l’UQTR, il serait disqualifié parce qu’il occupe actuellement un poste de professeur à l’Université d’Ottawa. Trahi par son adresse civique.
Je m’en voudrais d’empiler les reproches sur l’UQTR sans mentionner qu’il y a pire. L’Université York, par exemple, propose une chaire Canada 150… en histoire canadienne. Une université canadienne cherche un professeur d’histoire du Canada dans le cadre d’un projet créé pour fêter l’anniversaire du Canada, et les chercheurs canadiens vivant au Canada ne sont pas admissibles au concours. Du pur délire.
Du pur délire, accompagné d’un constat : l’existence d’un tel programme signifie que la formation scientifique offerte dans les universités canadiennes n’est même pas valorisée par les institutions canadiennes — et sinon par elles, par qui?
Les postes universitaires sont d’une rareté désespérante. La compétition est féroce. C’est une réalité que nous, chercheurs en début de carrière, avons acceptée lorsque nous avons entrepris des études de doctorat. Mais dans le cas présent, il ne s’agit justement plus d’une compétition mais d’une exclusion, dont les conséquences pernicieuses pourraient se faire sentir longtemps. Les postes créés dans le cadre du programme de chaires Canada 150 ne tombent pas du ciel, comme s’il s’agissait de cadeaux de la Fée des Emplois. Ils correspondent aux besoins limités des universités et doivent s’inscrire dans des cadres financiers tout aussi limités. Ce qui signifie que, pour chaque chaire attribuée cette année, un poste n’aura pas à être comblé par un concours normal l’année prochaine, ni dans trois ans, ni probablement dans cinq ans.
Les célébrations du 150e anniversaire de la Confédération achèvent, mais les dommages collatéraux subis par les doctorants et par les chercheurs à statut précaire ne sont pas sur le point de disparaître.
In July 1896, Victor D. Levitt, the manager of the Bostock-Ferrari Midway Carnival Company, received an alligator that hailed from the St. Sebastian River in Florida. Victor considered the gift to be a bad luck sign, as the large alligator had been bruised in a train wreck on its way to New York.
Victor decided to give the alligator to Acting Police Captain Lawson of the Coney Island Police station as a sign of his gratitude for Lawson’s upstanding service since taking over the corrupt police force started by Gravesend Supervisor John McKane.
Not wanting to appear ungrateful, Captain Lawson accepted the alligator graciously. He then chained the alligator to the lawn of the station house on West 8th Street, where it drew large crowds. Thinking that this activity was in violation of the penal code (not to mention dangerous!), he convinced Captain Paul Boyton that he needed an alligator at his new Sea Lion Park (because alligators and sea lions get along so well.)
Gravesend Town Supervisor and Sunday school teacher John McKane fortified his control over corruption and vice by creating a Coney Island police force in 1881 and appointing himself chief. Many of the “policemen” that he commanded from his shack in the sand were ex-cons who often robbed the people who sought their help.
Captain Paul Boyton
Born in Ireland in 1848, Paul Boyton took to the sea at a young age. He reportedly joined the U.S. Navy when he was 15 to fight for the Union side during the Civil War. He also helped organize the United States Life-Saving Service (USLSS) and served as captain of the USLSS station in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
It was during his stint with the USLSS in 1874 that he discovered the rubber life-saving suit invented by C. S. Merriman of Pittsburgh.
In the late 1880s, the Coney Island police shared space in the Gravesend town hall at 2337 McDonald Avenue (they had four jail cells in the basement). It was here Captain Lawson kept the alligator on display. The town hall was constructed around 1873 on the site of a former schoolhouse built in 1788. When the police force moved into their new headquarters in 1897, the town hall served Engine Co. 254. It was demolished in 1913.
The suit – the precursor to the frogman diving suit or the dry suit used in scuba diving – was essentially rubber pants and a shirt cinched at the waist. It had air pockets that one could inflate using tubes, which allowed the person to float in the water and stay dry for long periods of time. (If only the Titanic had a few thousand of these on board!)
Captain Paul Boyton
In the winter of 1879, James Creelman, a reporter for the New York Herald who couldn’t swim, was assigned to test the life-saving suit in New York. He and Paul Boyton donned the suits and jumped into the icy water at Castle Garden (today’s Battery Park) at 11 p.m.
The two daredevils paddled their way in the dark as Boyton shot off Coston flares to alert the men on Governor’s Island that they were approaching. Once near the island, they drank some wine and smoked cigars that Boyton kept along with his flares and other safety gear in a small, 3-foot iron boat that he tied to himself.
Captain Paul Boyton was famous for his daring demonstrations of a watertight rubber suit designed as a life-saving device for steamship passengers.
After a few dangerous encounters with ice floes, the men finally reached shore at Stapleton, Staten Island, around 6 a.m. It was James Creelman’s vivid account of that dangerous adventure that helped propel Boyton to aquatic stardom.
Sea Lion Park
After years on the road demonstrating the rubber suit and operating a traveling aquatic circus, Paul finally settled down at Coney Island.
In 1895, he bought 16 acres of cheap land behind the failing Elephant Colossus hotel from the New York & Sea Beach Railroad. He opened his Sea Lion Park on July 4th of that same year.
Paul Boyton would demonstrate the life-saving suit by paddling like an otter down the rivers of Europe. The Italians labeled him “L’uomo pesce” – the fish man. In this drawing from the Illustrated London News in November 1874, Boyton demonstrates the suit in Cork Harbour, Ireland.
Sea Lion Park was a fenced-in amusement park that featured a broad lagoon where Captain Boyton would demonstrate his rubber suit and show off his performing sea lions.
The one-price admission also gave people access to the old-mill water ride, the famous Shooting-the-Chutes ride designed by Boyton and Thomas Polk, and the Flip Flap Railroad ride.
This photo of Sea Lion Park was reportedly taken from the rear of the Elephant Colossus hotel across from Surf Avenue, between W. 11th and W. 12th Street. The Shooting-the-Chutes is on the right and the Flip Flap Railroad is near the entrance on the left.
I’m not sure why Police Captain Lawson or Captain Boyton thought Sea Lion Park would be a good place for an alligator, but it was here the alligator – which they named Cap Lawson — made its brief stay on the island.
The Grizzly Death of Cap Lawson
On July 14, 1896, Cap Lawson decided to break through the wires of his enclosure and make a meal out of Captain Boyton’s Newfoundland, Nero, who was sleeping nearby. As several attendants watched in horror, the alligator and dog engaged in a fierce battle.
Although the men tried to separate the two with clubs, their efforts were to no avail. Finally, Nero seized Cap Lawson by the throat and killed him. The poor alligator who was taken from his river home and survived a train crash never had a chance against the Coney Island Newfoundland.
Shooting-the-Chutes was an aquatic toboggan slide with flat-bottomed boats that slid down a long steep slide into the lagoon. An up-curve at the lower end would launch the boat into the air before it hit the surface, resulting in a series of hops and skips that heaved the passengers from their seats several times. The boat was guided to a landing by a boatman on board, then pulled up the ramp by cable and turned around on a small turntable to be ready for the next group of passengers who arrived at the top by elevator.
The Demise of Sea Lion Park
Although Captain Boyton enjoyed a few years of success – especially after he built a large ballroom on the former site of the Elephant hotel in 1899 – he couldn’t entice repeat customers on an annual basis.
The Flip Flap Railroad was a dangerous ride that featured two-passenger roller coaster cars that descended from a high lift hill and sped through a vertical 25-foot diameter loop. The cars were held in place at the top by centrifugal force only. The ride’s abrupt high G-forces sometimes caused whiplash as the cars entered the circular loop.
Following a dismal rainy season in 1902, he offered a 25-year lease to Frederic W. Thompson and Elmer “Skip” Dundy, proprietors of the “Trip to the Moon” attraction at Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park. A year later, they opened the spectacular Luna Park on the site.
Still drawn to the water, Boyton spent the rest of his life building houseboats along the Mississippi River. He retired in 1912 and returned to the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn.
On April 19, 1924, he died of complications from pneumonia in his new home at 2649 Manfield Place (today’s East 24th Street). He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery on Long Island.
The feeding of the sea lions at Captain Boyton’s Sea Lion Park.
For more about Captain Boyton, check out this article by his great grandson, Craig Dudley, on The Coney Island Blog.
While looking through the Newberry Library’s extraordinary collection of medieval books of hours, I was surprised to see how frequently strawberries dotted the marginal illuminations. The berries usually appear alongside colorful flowers; while obviously decorative, I began to wonder why this food was so prolific in imagery, yet relatively more obscure in contemporary recipes.
Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Case MS 43 fol. 27r Photo by Sarah Kernan
Books of hours are books for Christians that provide prayers and devotions, particularly the Hours of the Virgin. The Hours of the Virgin are an abbreviated form of the Liturgy of the Hours, also dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these books were enormously popular. Scribes created copies for readers of varying socioeconomic levels, and the most expensive books of hours were lavishly illuminated. Containing colorful images and frequent goldleaf, these manuscripts allow us to see the beautiful, opulent life of the wealthiest nobles and royals in the late Middle Ages. The images can be a feast of information for scholars, incorporating medieval clothing, table settings, and room décor with familiar Biblical imagery. Although I set out trying to locate images of food and dining in books of hours, strawberries kept attracting my attention. Whether French or Flemish, fourteenth- or fifteenth-century, and moderately or lavishly decorated, it seemed as though strawberries were everywhere.
Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Case MS 43 fol. 104r Photo by Sarah Kernan
Strawberries were undoubtedly consumed in medieval Europe. Fruit sellers sold the berries on the street, having advertised them with musical cries. The Parisian street cries for fresh strawberries lived on in an anonymous thirteenth-century (c. 1280) French motet; you can listen for “frese nouvele” sung in conjunction with other sounds of Parisian life. Strawberries appear in household records of the aristocracy and royalty. England’s King Henry VII not only received these fruits as gifts in 1506, but his gardener at Greenwich cultivated them. Entries in the records of Anne Stafford, dowager Duchess of Buckingham, reveal her purchase of the berries throughout the summer of 1465.[1] The fruit also occasionally appears in contemporary menus; the French Livre fort excellent de Cuysine (1555) lists strawberries in a course served alongside items like almonds, a Flemish cake, and white jelly.[2]
Despite these references to strawberries in a variety of texts, the fruit appears infrequently in medieval recipes. French recipes, to my knowledge, exclude this ingredient. Only a few medieval English recipes include strawberries. Some include little instruction, such as:
“Freseyes. Streberyen igrounden wyþ milke of alemauns, flour of rys oþur amydon, gret vlehs, poudre of kanele & sucre ; þe colur red, & streberien istreyed abouen.”[3]
Other recipes include more informative details:
“Strawberye.—Take Strawberys, & waysshe hem in tyme of ȝere in gode red wyne ; þan strayne þorwe a cloþe, & do hem in a potte with gode Almaunde mylke, a-lay it with Amyndoun oþer with þe flower of Rys, & make it chargeaunt and lat it boyle, and do þer-in Roysons of coraunce, Safroun, Pepir, Sugre grete plente, pouder Gyngere, Canel, Galyngale ; poynte it withVynegre, &a lytil whyte grece put þer-to ; colure it withAlkenade, & droppe it a-bowte, plante it with þe graynys of Pome-garnad, & serue it forth.[4]
Still other recipes, such as one for darioles, a type of custard-filled pie or tart, invite the cook to include strawberries alongside dates and other spices, only “if it be in time of yere.”[5] While strawberries were obviously a known, accessible, and popular summer berry, they appeared relatively infrequently in contemporary recipes.
The Christ Child holds a basket filled with strawberries. Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Case MS 50.5 fol. 135r Photo by Sarah Kernan
Why, then, do these berries appear so frequently in the religious imagery of books of hours given their proportionately few occurrences in recipes? I conjecture two main reasons. First, the number of recipes including strawberries is likely quite low because the fruit was probably most often served fresh and whole, rather than in prepared dishes, as mentioned above in the course of a French meal. After all, how many strawberries do you manage to carry into your kitchen after a harvest in your strawberry patch or a U-Pick farm? Freshly picked strawberries are quite easy to consume in embarrassingly large quantities, no cooking required!
Newberry Library, Chicago, IL, Case MS 47 fol. 87v Photo by Sarah Kernan
Second, strawberries were rife with symbolism in medieval Christian iconography. Depending upon the context, as well as the viewer/reader’s subjectivity, the red berries could represent drops Christ’s blood, while its trifoliate leaves were suggestive of the Holy Trinity.[6] Or when paired with flowers, as strawberries typically are in horae marginalia, they represented righteousness. The fruit was also associated with the Virgin Mary.[7] I have selected a variety of personal images from my research in the Newberry Library’s books of hours, each illustrating at least one of these interpretations of strawberry iconography.
Strawberries were likely depicted in these devotional margins because they were so popular. The little fruit did not require the preparations which burdened other victuals. A noble reader, especially, would instantly recognize the berry not only as a delicious fruit so easily eaten out-of-hand, but also one symbolizing Christ’s suffering, the Holy Trinity, and the dedicatee of Books of Hours, the Virgin Mary. What a great amount of work for such a tiny fruit.
NOTES
[1] Christopher Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England 1200–1500(Yale University Press, 2016), 109.
[2] Ken Albala, and Timothy Tomasik, eds., The Most Excellent Book of Cookery: An Edition and Translation of the Sixteenth-Century Livre fort excellent de Cuysine (Prospect Books, 2014), 241.
[3] Constance Hieatt, and Sharon Butler, eds., Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fourteenth Century (Including the Forme of Cury) (Early English Text Society, 1985), 46.
[4] Thomas Austin, ed., Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books (Early English Text Society, 1888), 29.
[5] Ibid., 75.
[5] Celia Fisher, Flowers in Medieval Manuscripts (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 24; and Celia Fisher, “Flowers and Plants, the Living Iconography,” in The Routledge Companion to Medieval Iconography, ed. Colum Hourihane (Routledge, 2016), 460–1.
[6] Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times (Greenwood, 2004), 22
