What was in Peter the Great's cabinet of curiosities?

Peter the Great was a feared leader but also an intellectual. Learn about Peter the Great and Peter the Great's love of academia and collectibles in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com!

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Kine, Welcome to the podcast. I'm
Candice Giftson, joined by Josh Clark. How's it going. That's
going pretty well, Candice. I'm feeling very curious today, Curious

(00:21):
like a cat, precisely, hungry like the wolf precisely. So
you know, it's fortunate for us that's two thousand and eight,
because you know, if this were like oh, nine oh eight,
a d um, I'd probably be killed right now because
scientific inquiry was pretty much frowned upon, right. Um. The
good thing is is that, um, we kind of emerged

(00:43):
from this dark age, the medieval ages, into the Age
of Exploration, where Europe just suddenly blew like dandelion feathers
into the into the wind and started looking around this big,
wild world, which is good for us, usually bad for
the people, you know, who already lived in the places
of the Europeans discovered. I just made air quotes, um.

(01:05):
But it did give rise to the Age of Enlightenment,
where scientific inquiry and curiosity just took off like a rocket, right,
and people were curious and tangible things to people who
traveled to these far in distant lands would bring back artifacts,
and it was considered very fashionable among Europe's elite to
come and gaze upon these items. I know, I know
you're talking about under Calmer right or vunder cam right right,

(01:28):
or cabinets of curiosity um. And they'd have all sorts
of weird stuff in it, right, and give me an example. Well,
these were precursors to the modern museum. So pretty much
anything you've seen a museum today from like oh, I
don't know, maybe not mastered on skeleton necessarily, but like
a starfish or you know, and an idol from an
equatorial cult, things like this, right, So I can totally

(01:48):
buy that. The thing is is I have heard that
one guy, in particular, Peter the Great, who was fascinated
by this kind of stuff and actually had his own
under Calmer um a very ledge and dary one had
baby skeletons in it, which just strikes me as weird,
like starfish, equatorial cult fetishes. Whatever I get that baby

(02:09):
skeleton is there is that factor fiction, believe it or not,
that's fact. So yeah, these just weren't metaphorical skeletons in
his closet. Don't know why. I took that pregnant pause there.
I guess I'm picturing these creepy little things. I I
would I would advise self doubt, but they're not really
that creepy. I mean, it's for the sake of science.
And Peter was really in love with um the work

(02:33):
of one particular Dutch scientist named Frederick Roisch. I don't
know if I'm saying that correctly, but I hope I
am Rois. Anyway, he put together a little dioramas of
Sylvan scenes that featured fetal skeletons. And instead of these
little baby skeletons wandering through brambles and trees and shrubs,
they were wandering through tangles of arteries and veins. And

(02:55):
some of them were a little more excited to be
captured in the diorama than others, those who have rather
disappointed at their state of eternal torment, cried into tissues,
made a flayed brain tissue. Actually, so they were quite
interesting to gaze upon, and and Peter had a couple.
They were really prized possessions. And uh, this wasn't just
for you know, his own six sense of humor. He

(03:15):
was really hoping to pull Russia out of the Dark
Ages to catch up with the rest of Europe. He
wanted his people to appreciate this thing, you know, for science,
for what it is, rather than being a freak of nature.
So you can actually see a picture of this creepy
diorama in Josh's article when you read the question what
was in Peter The Great Cabinet of Curiosities? On how
stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands

(03:39):
of other topics. Because at how stuff works dot com,
let us know what you think. Send an email to
podcast at how stuff works dot com.