[Rarebooks] fa:1692 Athenian Mercury DRUMMING WELL OF OUNDLE + FEMALE CIRCUMCISION + JOHN LOCKE

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other antiquarian scientific works, auction ending Sunday, September 15. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/mad63yy

Thanks again,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.

The Athenian Mercury. Vol. VI, Numb. 28. [AND] Vol. 7, Numb. 7. London: Printed for John Dunton, 1692. Two sheets, folio (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Light wear and small pinholes to the left margins; the second number with browning and some worming to the bottom margin.

Two separate numbers of this popular late seventeenth-century English periodical, the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format. Both numbers contain articles relating to the once-famous "Drumming Well" of Oundle, Northamptonshire, a mineral spring from which issued a mysterious drumming like "the beating of a March" that allegedly foretold "War or the Death of some great Person." In the first number, a reader asks several questions regarding the well ("Whence so strange a Sound can proceed? Whether they can Presignifie any future events?" etc.), to which the editors provide down-to-earth answers. The second number contains a a further account of the well by a correspondent who has interviewed several of the locals, "amongst the rest an Old Man aged 87." Other topics discussed are female circumcision ("…the Ethiopians, especially in the dominions of Prester John, circumcise their Females [etc.]"), a "Monster" mentioned in Dr. Locke's Essay Concerning Humane Understanding ("from the wast upward a perfect Woman, and from the wast downward perfect Swine"), and "a very ingenious and pretty Essay" demonstrating that the name of Louis XIV of France contains "the number of the Beast of Babylon."