S. Worthen | Weblog

I've seen a picture of an extravagantly large version of that that looks sort of like a fountain! It has something like 12 leeches in it, and you could tell how humid it was, or whether or not it would rain, but the number of distended leech bodies sticking out. I can't remember too many details offhand, since it was in a talk given at my department earlier this semester and, looking back at the list of lecture titles, all I can ascertain is that the talk was entitled "Instruments and Insight: Models of Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Meteorology" which really tells me practically nothing about the contents. I know that the leech-fountain thing was an invention by the particular person the talk was mostly about. Nifty to know that there was a household-sized equivalent around too, and much earlier in the century than I think whoever this guy was was working.