Tasting Lichfield, Touching China
Sir John Floyer's Senses
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8958138 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Mark S R Jenner, Mark Jenner (0000-0003-4402-4314, University of York, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 53 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 647-670 |
| Publication date | 2010-08-17 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Historical Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0018-246X • E-ISSN: 1469-5103 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0018246x10000233 |
| OpenAlex | W2168074710 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 11 |
| References cited | 22 |
Recent years have seen the growth of a new and newly self-conscious cultural historiography of the senses. This article extends and critiques this literature through a case study of the sensory work and worlds of Sir John Floyer, a physician active in Lichfield during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Floyer is best known for his work on pulse-taking, something which he described as contributing to the art of feeling. Less well known is his first book – a discussion of the tastes of the world and their therapeutic possibilities. The article explicates, contextualizes, and relates these two books and uses this analysis to suggest ways of refining and developing the wider historiography of the senses. It demonstrates how they reveal that what Floyer sensed was closely bound up with the changing ways in which he sensed, particularly when he began feeling the pulse in a ‘Chinese’ style. This, the article concludes, suggests that historians of the senses need fundamentally to reconsider the model of culture which underpins their work, focusing less on the ways in which people have interpreted or ordered sensory stimuli, and rather analysing the senses as forms of skill or dynamic ways of engaging with the world
Aesthetics · Art · China · Epistemology · Feeling · Historiography · Literature · Style (visual arts · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Philosophy · Psychology
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Acoustics in the early Royal Society 1660-1680
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Sir John Floyer (1649–1734) and His Study of Pulse and Respiration
Streets, Sounds and Identity in Interwar Harlem
Expectations and Expertise
Towards a science of touch, part I
John Floyer and Chinese Medicine
The Place of Nature and the Nature of Place
Living with the Chair
| Unique citing works | 11 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,73 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2025 (15) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |