Cooling ball
Cooling balls are objects made of rock crystal or other materials that were used to cool the body well into the 18th century. If you had a fever or on hot days, you would hold it in your hands or eyes.
history
Since ancient times, and probably as late as the middle of the 18th century, it was believed that rock crystal and other semi-precious stones had a cooling effect. Pliny the Elder wrote in his Naturalis historia that rock crystal is "petrified ice". For the first time in 1698 Johann Heinrich Hottinger rejected this belief in his Krystallologia with sound arguments. Caspar Neumann said in his Chymia Medica Dogmatico-Experimentalis 1756 that “one ascribes such power to the crystal stone balls simply because they are naturally cold and create a cooling sensation that is pleasant to those sick lying in the heat.” Already one The year before, he wrote that you could use a “very simple-minded piece of ice” instead of “reussing with Plinian fable ice cream”.
If the cooling balls were no longer cool enough, it was recommended to put them in rose water . Not only spheres, but also other handy shapes were possible; they just had to be big enough for their purposes. The small number of documents and specimens that have survived suggests that cooling balls were never particularly widespread and that they were reserved for aristocratic circles because of the expensive material.
The counterpart to cooling balls are the so-called heat balls , which were much more common and only coexisted with cooling balls during the late Middle Ages.
antiquity
The earliest references to cooling balls come from late antique poetry. They were used exclusively by women or "sissies". In the elegies of Properz (approx. 29/28 BC) it says:
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In Egypt, cooling balls were made from glass as an alternative, as rock crystal was extremely valuable. Texts by Martial and Juvenal suggest that amber cooling balls were also made as a substitute material, which developed a pleasant scent when rubbed:
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No cooling balls have survived from late antiquity. Only a few notes from the 19th century report finds that could possibly have been cooling balls.
Middle Ages and Renaissance
Rock crystal balls were apparently particularly popular in Scotland, where several specimens were found. In the 14th century, cooling balls are listed in the inventories of church princes and the French aristocracy. Cooling balls have probably never gone out of use since late antiquity, although no older medieval written sources have survived.
The Treasury Ministry, established by Pope Innocent IV in 1353, contains entries about "1 pomum cristalli parvum rotundum" and "2 pomelli de iaspide et 1 de cristallo", which are probably cooling balls. "Pommes de béricle" ( béricle = "beryl" = "rock crystal") are listed in the treasury registers of Charles V of France (inventory from 1379/80), the Duke of Burgundy (1416) and Johann von Berry (inventories from 1401 until 1416). In the possession of Margaret of Flanders, the Duchess of Burgundy, were 1405 "une pomme de cristal" and "une pomme de jaspre". An entry in the Duke of Burgundy's inventory from 1467 clearly describes the intended use: “une pomme de cristal ronde à refroidir mains”.
Particularly noble specimens could also be decorated with precious metal frames. In 1599 , Gabrielle d'Estrées owned “une pomme d'agate, garnie d'argent, pour rafraischir la main des malades”. In the case of other enclosed spheres or spheres made of colored glass, which were in the possession of various French nobles, Paracelsus and the Marbach Monastery , it is unclear whether they were used for cooling. In the 16th century, cooling balls were also used as a head on flea fur , so that the owner could hold it in the hands of the owner.
Baroque
In Ulrich Baumgartner's Pomeranian art cupboard, which was made between 1611 and 1615, there is a crystal ball which, according to the client, Philipp Hainhofer , was used "to cool your hands on it in summer and to freshen up your eyes" . It is thus the only remaining cooling ball that can be reliably identified as such. It measures 5.1 cm in diameter and is a scaled-down model that was never actually used.
Another, 8.6–8.75 cm ball made of rock crystal, which could be a cooling ball, is kept in the depot of the Green Vault in Dresden. The intended use of an object from the Brandenburg-Prussian Kunstkammer in Berlin and called a "gout ball" , measuring 4 cm, as well as a 3.15 cm ball from the Kunstgewerbemuseum Berlin is also uncertain . In 1911, an 11 cm rock crystal ball set in silver was auctioned in Lucerne.
literature
- Eugen von Philippovich : Curiosities / Antiques . Klinkhardt & Biermann, Braunschweig 1966, p. 233.
- Günther Schiedlausky: cooling ball and heating apple . Research notebooks of the Bavarian National Museum, Deutscher Kunstverlag 1984, ISBN 3-42200-757-1
Remarks
- ^ Rudolf Helm : Properz, poems. Old World Writings and Sources. Section for Classical Studies, German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Berlin 1965, p. 109
- ↑ Georg Luck : Properz and Tibullus, Liebeselegien. Zurich-Stuttgart 1964, pp. 246–249
- ^ M. Valerii Martialis Epigrammaton libri, explained by Ludwig Friedlaender. Leipzig 1886
- ↑ a b Ulrich Knoche : Decimus Junius Juvenalis Saturae . Das Wort der Antike, Vol. 1 Latin, Vol. 2 German. Munich 1950/51