Representing the rhinoceros: The Royal Society between art and science in the eighteenth century

Abstract

Discrepancies between the empirical evidence of single-horned rhinoceroses witnessed by Europeans and references from antiquity regarding double-horned rhinos puzzled members of the Royal Society for decades, particularly the circle of physicians around Drs Richard Mead and Hans Sloane. Three articles published in the Philosophical Transactions proposing solutions to the two-horned dilemma and the kinds of evidence onwhich they depended raised crucial issues for the Royal Society during the period - antiquarian concerns tied to philology, numismatics, textual emendation and collecting as well as the conceptual overlap between medical theory and the knowledge of the ancient world generally. © 2010 British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.