The Siege of Colchester

Artic le Scattered remains and paper bodies : Margaret Cavendish and the Siege of Colchester

Many histories of the civil war and biographies of Margaret Lucas Cavendish recount the story that, in 1648, parliamentary soldiers desecrated the Lucas family tomb, scattered the remains of Cavendish’s mother and sister, and tore out the corpses’ hair to wear in their hats. Tracking down the sources of this widely repeated story, this essay examines the role of textual accounts in producing th...

The siege of science

Science is in a state of siege. The traditional stage for scientific ideas through peerreviewed academic journals has been hijacked by an overpriced journal monopoly. After a wave of mergers and take-overs, big business publishing houses now exercise economic control over access to knowledge and free scientific discourse. Their ‘all is number’ rationale, made possible and perpetuated by single-...

The Colchester Medical Society, 1774

THE COLCHESTR MEDIcAL SocIrY was founded in 1774 by Robert Richardson Newell (1750-1814), a surgeon and apothecary practising in the town. It is the oldest provincial medical society in Great Britain.' The earliest minute books have been lost, but the date is confirmed in Dr. Newell's obituary notice in the local press," and by the Medical Register for 1779, which lists all the members at that ...

The plague in Colchester-1579-1666.

The deep sea under siege

P T a o c f fi l s t s t r s h s Mineral source: The fluid ejected from hydrothermal vents (black smokers) contains valuable minerals, which accumulate in the sediment around the vents. The image shows a black smoker known as The Brothers, off the coast of New Zealand. (Photo: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/ Wikimedia Commons.) eneath deep ocean waters, the sea oor remains very...