Commonplace Book

Miiller, Daniel. Muller s allegory. rhttp //www.levitv.com/alchemv/muller html1. "Extracted from Patrick Ruthven s commonplace book in Edinburgh University Library"... 

The Massachusetts Historical Society has preserved a commonplace book which originally belonged to John Winthrop (1681-1747). In it there is a letter which Francis B. Winthrop wrote to his brother Thomas L. Winthrop of Boston on September 10, 1803, describing the spring at New London in connection with their grandfather. I think you must... 

Ashm. 208, fos. 53, 54. I suspect that the other book to which he referred was an early alchemical commonplace book, now missing or subsumed into Ashm. 1472. 

Forman signalled the importance of cako in the verse preface to Principles ofphilosofi , his c.1597 alchemical commonplace book. In allegorical language... 

Forman noted the word chaos next to passages about creation in the alchemical texts that he copied.2 And under the headings for Chaos in his alchemical commonplace books he described creation, much as he had in Upon the firste of Genesis , though in verse.27 Genesis, as Forman explained, was The trewe knowledge, wherof to many is rare which moch may healpe thee in tyme of need . 28... 

Extracted from Patrick Ruthven s commonplace book in Edinburgh University Library. 

On commonplace books, see Ann Blair, "Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy The Commonplace Book," Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992) 541-51 Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford Clarendon Press, 1996] and Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, 163. 

Blair, Ann. "Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy The Commonplace Book." Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992) 541-51. 

Moss, Ann. Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought. Oxford Clarendon Press, 1996. 

It is not difficult to see that the first-born son of such a man as Benjamin Rush might have some difficult problems building an identity of his own. This, apparently, was the case. John Rush began to study medicine, dropped it in favor of a naval career, resumed it and got his degree, only to drop it again. On December 11, i8o2, Benjamin Rush made this note in his Commonplace Book This day my son John resumed the study of medicine. So anxious was he to return to my house and business that he said he would supply the place of one of my men servants, and even clean my stable rather than continue to follow a sea life. We are left to wonder why the son had to, or felt that he had to, humiliate himself before his father so much before he could return home and why the elder Rush recorded his son s abjection in his diary. 

Entry in the Commonplace Book for September s, 1810 This day my son John came home from the hospital somewhat better, but not well. He returned six days afterward, much worse. (In The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, p. 294.)... 

Benjamin Rush, Commonplace Book of Benjamin Rush, ijga-tSlj, in The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, pp. 13-360 p. 8. ... 

Rush, B. The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush His "Travels Through Life" together with his "Commonplace Book for lyS iSij." Edited with Introduction and Notes by George W. Comer. Princeton Princeton Univer. Press, 1948. 

I.e. Montesquieu had copied extracts from his extensive reading into his commonplace book. - Eds. 

Royal Society Boyle Papers [hereafter RSBP]. vol. 28, fol. 309r. In the Philosophical Diary of January 1654/55 Boyle collected some notes from Clodius on Spirit of urine and of blood and their uses in medicine (RSBP 8, fols. 140-48). Some notes, bearing no date, testify that Boyle planned to write a natural history of vital and animal spirits (Commonplace book, Royal Society, MS 186, fol. 190-... 

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