Abstract

Chapter 3 is devoted to a non-medical use of drugs: as collector’s items and objects of research in the Wunderkammer, which was popular in the early modern period. I argue that Joannes Six van Chandelier sees the wondrous nature of exotic collectibles as sources not only of sensory pleasure and of insights into nature, but also of moral danger, especially the vices avarice and curiositas, an immoderate and un-Christian thirst for knowledge. In poems on rarities such as bezoar stone, tulips, and human and animal bones, Six develops literary strategies that present himself as a learned merchant who recognises these dangers and has them well in hand.

Keywords: Cabinet of curiosities, senses, avarice, curiosity, bezoar stone, tulips

Ziet Sijbrand Feitama hier uitgebeeld na ‘t Leeven,

Zijn Geest wort daagelijks weetgierig omgedreeven

In Prenten na de Konst, in Vreemde Droogerij,

In wond’re Raarigheen, alsook in Poësy.

See Sijbrand Feitama, here portrayed after Life,

His Spirit dwells everyday curiously

Around Art prints, around Foreign Drugs,

Around marvellous Rarities, but also around Poetry.

Closely connected with this new surge of interest in natural wonders was the emergence of collecting as an activity not just of patricians and princes, as in the High and Later Middle Ages, but of scholars and medical men as well. Unlike princely collectors, who continued to prize precious materials and elaborate workmanship, physicians and apothecaries collected mainly naturalia, which reflected their own interests in therapeutics and were relatively affordable.