spermatic vessels.* Swammerdam, Ruysch, and Albinus, however, really created and diffused the knowledge of the art of injections. Swammerdam saw that in order to fulfill its purpose the material used ought to be injected as a fluid and yet solidify in the vessels, and not evaporate as water did. He first used suet; in 1667 he substituted wax, and in 1672 he sent to the Royal Society a preparation thus injected. His success was such that in his best preparations he filled even the arteries of the skin of the face. Two years later he gave up anatomy as impious, joined the party of a religious fanatic, and died in 1680.

Before relinquishing his profession he made his method public in Amsterdam, Paris, and London, and gave special instruction to his friend and fellow-townsman Ruysch, who pushed the art so far that he was said to believe that the body was almost wholly made up of vessels.‡ Leeuwenhoek, another citizen of Leyden, had fortunately just at this time invented, or rather made really available, the microscope, § and thus Ruysch was enabled not only to inject finer vessels directly, but also to discover, as a result of his injections, networks of vessels hitherto unsuspected. || His first trials

* Encyc. Brit., vol. ii, p. 761. Portal, Hist. de l'Anat., tome iii, pp. 220, 221, 261. Strangely enough, Hyrtl (Zerglied., p. 587), who is usually so exact, attributes the first mercurial injections to Nuck, whose work (Adenogr. Curios., Leydæ, 1692) was published twenty-four years later than De Graaf's "De Usu Siphonis."

† Portal, Hist. de l'Anat., iii, 334.

66

This erroneous belief (totum corpus ex vasculis) was really held by Ruysch and nearly all his contemporaries. "Antoine Ferrein," says Sprengel (Hist. de la Méd., tome iv, p. 338), was the only one who advocated the parenchyma of the organs against Ruysch and Malpighi." It was long held by Boerhaave's school also.

§ Magnifying lenses of rock crystal were found in the palace of Nimroud, by Layard. The compound microscope was invented by Hans Zansz, spectacle-maker, at Middleburg, Holland, in 1590. Encyc. Brit., 8th ed., art. Microscope, p. 801.

He discovered the vasa vasorum, the bronchial arteries, the vessels

were made on the bodies of infants, but finally, when, in 1666, Admiral Berkeley was killed and his body captured in the memorable four days' fight between the English and the Dutch fleets, Ruysch successfully embalmed his body by order of the States General, and sent it back to England with an almost natural appearance.* Such was his success,† says M. Fontenelle, that he seemed not to preserve men after death, but rather to prolong their life. At the close of his long career they remained perfectly preserved, with their original softness, flexibility, and color.

In his museum, which was called the eighth wonder of the world, the dulce and the utile were elegantly combined. Flowers, ornamental shell-work, and rarities worthy a royal cabinet were interspersed with skeletons, injections, and other anatomical pieces (see Frontispiece), and many of them, especially the fœtal skeletons, were labelled with appropriate and instructive mottos. Thus, one who did not attain to of the middle layer of the choroid, called the "Tunica Ruyschiana" (though this was first accurately described by Zinn, in 1755), the finer vessels in the serous and synovial membranes, the pia and dura maters, the corpora cavernosa, and many parenchymata. Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 594. Sprengel, Hist. de la Méd., tome iv, pp. 144, 233, 277, 278.

* Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. i, p. 528. Portal, Hist. de l'Anat., tome iii, p. 262. So natural was one infant's body that Peter the Great is said to have kissed it.

† Hyrtl (Zerglied., p. 597) found the process described by J. Ch. Rieger (Introd. in notitiam rerum natural. et artefact., etc., Hagæ, 1743, 4to, 2 vols.) under "Animal” (vol. i) and "Balsamus" (vol. ii, pp. 54-57). The latter contains a copy of Ruysch's autograph directions as to his mode of injection and preservation. The following are extracts: "Pro materie ceracea sumendum sebum, et quidem tempore hyemali simplex-æstivo tempore exiguum frustum cera alba addendum. Liquefactæ materiæ additur cinnabaris factitiæ quantitas sufficiens, aut quantum vis, idque movendo, donec bene permixta sit cinnabaris. Liquor meus est spiritus, e vino, vel frumento confectus, cui si addere velimus in destillatione manipulum piperis nigri, eo acrius penetrat per carnosa spartes."

Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. i, p. 529. The plates in Ruysch's Thesaurus Anatomicus, i-vi, Amstel., 1701, illustrate these quaint, but withal artistic, arrangements. See opposite plate.

even uterine maturity holds an inflated bladder aloft, and teaches us the shortness of life in its motto, "Homo Bulla,”— "Man but a bubble." Another holding a preparation of the lymphatics showing their valves, which had been made twenty-five years before, and not long after their first discovery by Aselius, in 1622, reminds you they are "as difficult as beautiful." A third, a uterus containing a fetus, hints at a questionable paternity: "Quo minime credis gurgite piscis erit," "Fish may be found in least suspected pools." A still-born child's motto, "Hæc mihi prima dies, hæc mihi summa fuit,"—"This my first day was my last," reminds one of the laconic epitaph in a similar case

"If I was so soon to be done for,
What was I ever begun for?"

And the head of a noted woman of Leyden, whose finger points to the syphilitic perforations of her skull, has the warning motto, "In similar waters similar fish are found."* The museum was the admiration of all distinguished men at home and abroad. Generals, ambassadors, princes, and even kings delighted to visit it, and spend whole days with its author. † Peter the Great, when in Holland, in 1698, thus divided his time with Leeuwenhoek and Ruysch: he attended the lectures of the latter, and became an earnest student of medicine. He always carried a small surgical case. He learned to draw teeth, to bleed, and to dissect. So enthusiastic a pupil did he prove that he always occupied the front seat, and during one of the lectures he leaped up and was about to seize the scalpel the master held. The Tsar's surgical

Ruysch, Museum Anatomicum. An Appendix to his Opera Omnia Anat. Med. Chirur., 4to, Amstel., 1721, pp. 110, 158, 156, 173, 174, and 163, respectively. (In the Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia.)

† Portal, Hist. de l'Anat., tome iii, p. 262.

Life of Peter the Great, London, 1832.