John Conyers (apothecary)

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John Conyers (c. 1633–1694) was an English apothecary and pioneering archaeologist. [1] He was known "to collect such Antiquities as were daily found in and about London."

Apothecary historical name for a medical professional now called a pharmacist

Apothecary is one term for a medical professional who formulates and dispenses materia medica to physicians, surgeons, and patients. The modern pharmacist has taken over this role. In some languages and regions, the word "apothecary" is still used to refer to a retail pharmacy or a pharmacist who owns one. Apothecaries' investigation of herbal and chemical ingredients was a precursor to the modern sciences of chemistry and pharmacology.

Contents

Artefacts and antiquities

Conyers had a shop in Fleet Street, near St Paul's Cathedral during the period of construction of Sir Christopher Wren's new cathedral to replace Old St Paul's after the Great Fire of London, and collected the medieval and Roman artefacts unearthed, recording the finds in notebooks. They included a Roman kiln found 26 feet (8 metres) below surface level in the 1670s. According to his younger friend John Bagford, Conyers "made it his chief Business to make curious Observations and to collect such Antiquities as were daily found in and about London." [2] His antiquarian collection won praise from the Athenian Mercury [1] and there was talk of opening it to the public, although this does not seem to have happened.

Fleet Street street in the City of London, England

Fleet Street is a major street mostly in the City of London. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary with the City of Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was named.

St Pauls Cathedral Church in London

St Paul's Cathedral, London, is an Anglican cathedral, the seat of the Bishop of London and the mother church of the Diocese of London. It sits on Ludgate Hill at the highest point of the City of London and is a Grade I listed building. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. The present cathedral, dating from the late 17th century, was designed in the English Baroque style by Sir Christopher Wren. Its construction, completed in Wren's lifetime, was part of a major rebuilding programme in the City after the Great Fire of London. The cathedral building largely destroyed in the Great Fire, now often referred to as Old St Paul's Cathedral, was a central focus for medieval and early modern London, including Paul's walk and St. Paul's Churchyard being the site of St. Paul's Cross.

Christopher Wren English architect

Sir Christopher Wren PRS FRS was an English anatomist, astronomer, geometer, and mathematician-physicist, as well as one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history. He was accorded responsibility for rebuilding 52 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including what is regarded as his masterpiece, St Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710.

Conyers was present at the excavation in 1679 of the remains of a supposed elephant from a gravel bed at Battlebridge (King's Cross). [3] The site was near Gray's Inn Lane, opposite "Black Mary's". The remaining tooth was later thought to be of a mammoth or straight-tusked elephant. [4] A flint handaxe was found nearby, [3] now famous as the Gray's Inn Lane handaxe and on display in the British Museum's Enlightenment Gallery. [5] Conyers was the first to argue that it was a human artefact. [1] John Bagford then somewhat later argued for an origin of the assemblage in the Roman presence under the Emperor Claudius; [3] this was in a letter of 1715, in which Bagford accepted the human origin of the handaxe. [4]

Elephant Large terrestrial mammals with trunks from Africa and Asia

Elephants are large mammals of the family Elephantidae in the order Proboscidea. Three species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. Elephants are scattered throughout sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Elephantidae is the only surviving family of the order Proboscidea; other, now extinct, members of the order include deinotheres, gomphotheres, mastodons, anancids and stegodontids; Elephantidae itself also contains several now extinct groups, such as the mammoths and straight-tusked elephants.

Mammoth Extinct genus of mammals

A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus, one of the many genera that make up the order of trunked mammals called proboscideans. The various species of mammoth were commonly equipped with long, curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair. They lived from the Pliocene epoch into the Holocene at about 4,000 years ago, and various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia, and North America. They were members of the family Elephantidae, which also contains the two genera of modern elephants and their ancestors.

Straight-tusked elephant species of mammal (fossil)

The straight-tusked elephant is an extinct species of elephant that inhabited Europe and Western Asia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene.

The handaxe came into the antiquarian museum of John Kemp. [6] With other items from Conyers' collection, it passed to Sir Hans Sloane, whose personal objects became one of the founding collections of the British Museum. Conyers's notes on his discoveries are now in the British Library as Sloane manuscripts Ms 959 and Harley manuscripts Ms 5953.

John Kemp or Kempe (1665–1717) was an English antiquarian, known as a collector.

British Museum National museum in the Bloomsbury area of London

The British Museum, in the Bloomsbury area of London, United Kingdom, is a public institution dedicated to human history, art and culture. Its permanent collection of some eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence, having been widely sourced during the era of the British Empire. It documents the story of human culture from its beginnings to the present. It was the first public national museum in the world.

British Library national library of the United Kingdom

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and the largest national library in the world by number of items catalogued. It is estimated to contain 150–200 million+ items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.

Conyers married a niece of Francis Glisson. [1] A celebrated shield, bought by Conyers from a London ironmonger, was sold after his death by one of his daughters to John Woodward. [7] Dr Woodward's Shield, also now in the British Museum, is now recognised as a classicising French Renaissance buckler of the mid-16th century, perhaps sold from the Royal Armouries of Charles II, but was thought by Woodward and others to be an original Roman work. [8]

Francis Glisson British doctor

Francis Glisson was a British physician, anatomist, and writer on medical subjects. He did important work on the anatomy of the liver, and he wrote an early pediatric text on rickets. An experiment he performed helped debunk the balloonist theory of muscle contraction by showing that when a muscle contracted under water, the water level did not rise, and thus no air or fluid could be entering the muscle.

Shield item of armour carried to intercept attacks or projectiles

A shield is a piece of personal armour held in the hand or mounted on the wrist or forearm. Shields are used to intercept specific attacks, whether from close-ranged weaponry or projectiles such as arrows, by means of active blocks, as well as to provide passive protection by closing one or more lines of engagement during combat.

John Woodward (naturalist) English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist

John Woodward was an English naturalist, antiquarian and geologist, and founder by bequest of the Woodwardian Professorship of Geology at Cambridge University. Though a leading supporter of the importance of observation and experiment in what we now call science, few of his theories have survived.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 4 Burnby, Juanita. "Conyers, John". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/56834.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ Levine, pp. 141–142, quote p. 141.
  3. 1 2 3 Levine, p. 141.
  4. 1 2 British History Online
  5. ↑ British Museum page
  6. ↑ Joseph M. Levine (1991). Dr. Woodward's Shield: History, Science, and Satire in Augustan England. Cornell University Press. p. 141. ISBN   0-8014-9935-6.
  7. ↑ Levine, p. 151.
  8. ↑ The Woodward Shield / Dr Woodward's Shield, British Museum]

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