Balduin Van Oxenhardt
Belgian scientist, adventurer and explorer, most famous as the discoverer of Fluction Theory, and as the first man on Mars.
Born 27 November 1812 in Antwerp, Belgium.
Son of Dr. Cornelius Van Oxenhaerdt, a chemistry professor from Antwerp, (later changed name to Van Oxenhardt, (1778-1813), and Violette Bourcy-Van Oxenhardt, a Catholic minor aristocrat from Brussels (b.1787).
During the September 1830 revolution in favour of the recognition of Belgium as a state, Van Oxenhardt was wounded by a stray musketball. He fell into a fever in his garret in Brussels and nearly died. A year later he would suffer in the Siege of Antwerp.
The discovery of the principle of fluction apparently came to him in this fevered state. A statue of Laocoön in his room led him to dwell on entanglement, which drew him toward the image of tempero-spatial fluction which he would work so hard to channel into words in the
It will now be readily understood that no axiomatic idea—no idea founded in the fluctuating principle, obviousness of relation—can possibly be so secure—so reliable a basis for any structure erected by the Reason, as that idea—(whatever it is, wherever we can find it, or if it be practicable to find it anywhere)—which is irrelative altogether—which not only presents to the understanding no obviousness of relation, either greater or less, to be considered, but subjects the intellect, not in the slightest degree, to the necessity of even looking at any relation at all.
If such an idea be not what we too heedlessly term “an axiom,” it is at least preferable, as a Logical basis, to any axiom ever propounded, or to all imaginable axioms combined:—and such, precisely, is the idea with which my deductive process, so thoroughly corroborated by induction, commences.
My particle proper is but absolute Irrelation.
To sum up what has been here advanced:—As a starting point I have taken it for granted, simply, that the Beginning had nothing behind it or before it—that it was a Beginning in fact—that it was a beginning and nothing different from a beginning—in short that this Beginning was——that which it was.
If this be a “mere assumption” then a “mere assumption” let it be.
From the Antwerp Notebooks, 5 January 1831
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Mary Shelley, born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin on 30 August 1797.
English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Her husband the poet Percy Shelley drowned in Switzerland in 1822. After her husband's death, Mary Shelley resolved to live by her pen, but her financial situation was precarious.
On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Shelley.
In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as man and wife. Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty.
During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner(1837). In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838).
Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems.
Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of her son Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school, and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts.
English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. Her husband the poet Percy Shelley drowned in Switzerland in 1822. After her husband's death, Mary Shelley resolved to live by her pen, but her financial situation was precarious.
On 23 July 1823, she left Genoa for England and stayed with her father and stepmother in the Strand until a small advance from her father-in-law enabled her to lodge nearby. Sir Timothy Shelley had at first agreed to support his grandson only if he were handed over to an appointed guardian. Mary Shelley rejected this idea instantly. She managed instead to wring out of Sir Timothy a limited annual allowance (which she had to repay when Percy Florence inherited the estate), but to the end of his days he refused to meet her in person and dealt with her only through lawyers. In 1826, Percy Florence became the legal heir of the Shelley estate after the death of Charles Shelley, his father's son by Harriet Shelley. Mary Shelley enjoyed the stimulating society of William Godwin's circle, but poverty prevented her from socialising as she wished. She also felt ostracised by those who, like Sir Timothy, still disapproved of her relationship with Shelley.
In the summer of 1824, Mary Shelley moved to Kentish Town in north London. At around this time, Mary Shelley was working on her novel, The Last Man (1826); and she assisted a series of friends who were writing memoirs of Byron and Percy Shelley—the beginnings of her attempts to immortalise her husband. She also met the American actor John Howard Payne and the American writer Washington Irving, who intrigued her. In 1827, Mary Shelley was party to a scheme that enabled her friend Isabel Robinson and Isabel's lover, Mary Diana Dods, who wrote under the name David Lyndsay, to embark on a life together in France as man and wife. Mary Shelley obtained false passports for the couple. In 1828, she fell ill with smallpox while visiting them in Paris. Weeks later she recovered, unscarred but without her youthful beauty.
During the period 1827–40, Mary Shelley was busy as an editor and writer. She wrote the novels Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835), and Falkner(1837). In 1830, she sold the copyright for a new edition of Frankenstein for £60 to Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley for their new Standard Novels series. Throughout this period, she also championed Percy Shelley's poetry, promoting its publication and quoting it in her writing. By 1837, Percy's works were well-known and increasingly admired. In the summer of 1838 Edward Moxon, the publisher of Tennyson and the son-in-law of Charles Lamb, proposed publishing a collected works of Percy Shelley. Mary was paid £500 to edit the Poetical Works (1838).
Mary Shelley continued to treat potential romantic partners with caution. In 1828, she met and flirted with the French writer Prosper Mérimée, but her one surviving letter to him appears to be a deflection of his declaration of love. She was delighted when her old friend from Italy, Edward Trelawny, returned to England, and they joked about marriage in their letters. Their friendship had altered, however, following her refusal to cooperate with his proposed biography of Percy Shelley; and he later reacted angrily to her omission of the atheistic section of Queen Mab from Percy Shelley's poems.
Mary Shelley's first concern during these years was the welfare of her son Percy Florence. She honoured her late husband's wish that his son attend public school, and, with Sir Timothy's grudging help, had him educated at Harrow. To avoid boarding fees, she moved to Harrow on the Hill herself so that Percy could attend as a day scholar. Though Percy went on to Trinity College, Cambridge, and dabbled in politics and the law, he showed no sign of his parents' gifts.
I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.Preface to Frankenstein, 1831
"Tarrare"
In the unsavoury annals of polyphagy, the worst glutton of all time was the Frenchman known as Tarrare. It is not known if Tarrare was his real name or a nickname. Tarrare was born near Lyon and, as a child, was already noted for his enormous appetite. In his teens, he was turned out of the house by parents who could no longer feed him. For years, he wandered the French provinces in the company of robbers and whores and as an attention-getting act for an itinerant quack, swallowing stones, whole apples and live animals before the mountebank’s spiel about his wonder-drugs.
In 1788, he reached Paris, to earn a perilous living by means of similar performances in the streets of the French capital. During the revolutionary wars in France, Tarrare joined the army but was driven to desperation by his raging hunger. Exhausted, despite quadruple rations and habitual foraging among dustbins and gutters, he came to the attention of the military surgeons. Among their experiments, Tarrare was given a live cat, which he devoured after tearing its abdomen with his teeth and drinking its blood. He later vomited the fur and the skin. The doctors also fed him live puppies, snakes, lizards and other animals, and Tarrare refused nothing. Contrary to the imagined stereotype of a glutton, Tarrare was pale, thin and of medium height, and of apathetic temperament. His fair hair was uncommonly soft; his mouth enormously wide; and the enamel of the teeth much stained. He sweated profusely and was always surrounded by a malodorous stench which got even worse after his nauseating feasts. Professor Percy wrote that the methods utilized by “this filthy glutton” to make his rations last were too disgusting to be described in detail and “dogs and cats fled in terror at his aspect” as if they knew what fate he was preparing for them.
Tormented by his appetite and the doctor’s bizarre attempts to cure him, he would stalk the dark back alleys of Paris where he fought street mongrels for the possession of disgusting carrion found in the gutters and refuse-heaps. Within the hospital, he sometimes skulked into the wards to drink the blood from patients being bled. Several times, he was kicked out of the morgue after taking liberties with the corpses. Eventually the inevitable scenario happened; a 14-month-old infant disappeared from a ward and Tarrare was blamed. The enraged doctors and porters chased him away and he was never seen at the hospital again.
Another gallic glutton was Charles Domery, an ordinary soldier, captured in February 1799 on the French ship Hoche when it was taken by the Royal Navy off the coast of Ireland. He amazed his guards with his voracious appetite; still hungry after receiving double rations, he constantly begged food from other prisoners and did not refuse the dead cats and rats delivered to him as presents by the curious jailors. While at an army camp outside Paris, Domery had eaten 174 cats in the course of a year. Dogs and rats equally suffered from his merciless jaws, and he also ate four or five pounds of grass each day, if bread and meat was scarce. He liked meat raw better than cooked or boiled, and a raw bullock’s liver was his favourite dish. In spite of his gluttonous habits, Charles Domery was of normal build and stature; although he was completely illiterate, the prison doctors considered him to be at least of average intelligence.
In September 1799, Dr Johnston, the Commissioner of Sick and Wounded Seamen, decided to perform an experiment to test the Frenchman’s preternatural appetite for even the most disgusting pieces of meat. At four o’clock in the morning, Charles Domery breakfasted on four lb (1.8kg) of raw cow’s udder, and at half past nine, Dr Johnston and Admiral Child had prepared a suitable luncheon for him, consisting of five lb (2.3kg) of raw beef, twelve large tallow candles, and a bottle of porter. At one o’clock, the glutton again devoured five lb of raw beef, one lb of candles and three large bottles of porter. At five o’clock, he returned to the prison; it was recorded that he was of particularly good cheer after his great feast: he danced, smoked his pipe, and drank another bottle of porter. The following morning, he awoke at four o’clock, eager for his breakfast.!
In the early 1820s, another glutton, Jacques de Falaise, a denizen of Monmartre, became a time-honoured attraction at various sleazy taverns around Paris. During his act he swallowed eggs and walnuts whole; but these were merely hors doeuvres to the entrée of living sparrows, crawfish, mice, adders and eels. On one occasion, he nearly died after swallowing 50 five franc pieces for a wager. His eventual demise came when he hanged himself some years later; the autopsy showed that his stomach bore the scars of numerous injuries resulting from the sharp and corrosive substances he had swallowed.
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