Abstract

This special issue eruditely demonstrates the deep interconnections between British antiquarianism, natural philosophy and medicine in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These stimulating papers, representing the state of the field, include: analysis of classical antecedents for balneology; Sir Isaac Newton's attempts to restore the prisca sapientia and use of mathematics to reform knowledge of antiquity; editors and autograph collectors who preserved the still extant correspondence (and hence the intellectual geography and networks) of early modern antiquaries; and the re‐enactment of ancient landscapes and relics using geological theory and three‐dimensional museum exhibits. As Susan Pearce pointed out, Jeremiah Milles, in his presidential address to the Society of Antiquaries in 1781, remarked that ‘History, Science and Art may claim an equal share in the Attention and Labour of the Antiquary’.