operations, however, did not prove so successful, for a Dutch merchant's wife whom he tapped died soon after, but the Tsar, by way of consolation, attended the funeral. On his return to Leyden, in 1717, he purchased Ruysch's museum for 30,000 florins, and sent it to St. Petersburg. Ruysch, though seventy-nine years old, immediately went to work on another. When his son, his efficient assistant, died, in 1727, he pressed his two daughters into the work, and so diligent had he been that after his death, in 1731 (æt. ninetythree), his second museum was sold to Stanislaus, King of Poland, for 20,000 florins.*

*These are the statements generally made as to their disposition on the authority of Burggræve, Précis de l'Hist. de l'Anat., Gand, 1840, pp. 295, 296. Hyrtl states (Zerglied., p. 592, note) that Heister asserts in the Preface to Vater's Museum Anat. propr., Helmst., 1750, that the second museum was bought by Fred. Aug. I, Elector of Saxony, from Ruysch's heirs, and carried to Dresden. Fred. Aug. II sent it to Wittenberg, and Vater, Ruysch's pupil, then Professor of Anatomy in the University, made a catalogue of it (Regii Mus. Anat. August. Catal. Univ. Vittebergæ, 1736). Haller (Bibl. Anat., tome ii, p. 43) says of this collection: "Aliquæ partes corp. hum. ex Ruyschii thesauris coemtæ, aliqua undique collecta."

The question is often asked, "What became of Ruysch's preparations?" Conflicting statements are made, some stating they exist at the present day in perfect preservation. (Bayle et Thillaye, vol. ii, p. 85, Parson's Anat. Prep., Pref., p. v.) I am glad, therefore, to be able to give so valuable an opinion as that of Prof. Hyrtl, which, being founded on personal observation, is both interesting and decisive. He says (Zerglied., pp. 592, 593):

'Ruysch's fame outlasted his collections, and the many preparations which he expected to preserve, 'per liquorem suum balsamicum æternos in annos,' no longer exist. In the Leyden Anatomical Museum Prof. Halbertsma showed me a planta pedis which it is thought was injected by Ruysch. In the Greifswald Museum I saw two others which, it is asserted, are Ruysch's injections. They came from Vater's private collection (Mus. Anat. prop. above). The preparations sent to him by Ruysch (with whom he was in uninterrupted relations) are especially noted as such. After Vater's death the collection passed into the hands of his successor, Langguth, and at the dissolution of the University of Wittenberg was bought by an apothecary for the glass! By him a part was sold to Prof. Schultze, in Greifswald, when travelling through Wittenberg. In the Museum at Prague, also, I found three small preparations—an injected

What in Ruysch's time was a profound secret is in our day a common art. By the help of many workers in the same field* our means of injection are greatly increased, and our results, though to the eye they do not reach those popularly ascribed to Ruysch, yet for diffusing the knowledge of

finger, a piece of intestinal mucous membrane, and a child's hand-whose mode of preservation so exactly corresponded with that in Ruysch's Thesaurus Anatomicus that they are most likely the work of this masterhand, and were probably among those collected by Du Toy, Professor of Anatomy at Prague in the first half of the last century, in his scientific tour in the Netherlands. Even in the Vienna Museum, according to Schwediauer, towards the end of the last century some of Ruysch's preparations were to be found. Those at Prague I have examined, and found them entirely worthless." On page 595 he speaks of them as "scarcely to be recognized as injections of the vessels," and of the "ruined specimens in Greifswald and Prague which through long continuance in spirit (liquor balsamicus) are brittle, and by the development of the fatty acids are discolored and reduced to a grayish-brown and crumbling pasty mass (Teig)-extravasation everywhere."

The Russian collection, however, Hyrtl seems not to have examined, and it is with pleasure, therefore, that I can state both on the authority of a letter from E. Schuyler, Esq., of the United States Legation at St. Petersburg (see the letter in the Phila. Med. Times, Feb. 1, 1872, p. 173), and another private letter from Prof. Pelechin, Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Imperial Medical School of St. Petersburg, that Ruysch's cabinet forms at the present time part of the Anatomical Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences, and is in an excellent state of preservation, the injections being perfect. Unfortunately, a small piece of a fetal intestine sent me by Prof. Pelechin for microscopical sections was destroyed by the carelessness of a third person. It was perfectly preserved, and looked very like a successful vascular injection.

*Restricted as I was in time, I was unable to develop many points as I would gladly have done had time allowed. The principal cultivators of the art of injections since Ruysch are as follows: Alex. Monro primus added the stopcock to the injecting tubes, and used double injections, viz.: glue to fill the finer vessels, followed by wax for the coarser. None of his preparations remain even in Edinburgh. Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 599.

Lieberkühn (Berlin, 1711-46) was the first whose injections really stood the test of the microscope, and are worthy of comparison with the preparations made at present. Sixty-six of them are in the Vienna Museum, each in the focus of one of his simple microscopes which are attached to the slides. He first made the joint between the syringe and the arterial

anatomy among the profession, and for anatomical and microscopical research, they are vastly better. Injections of plaster of Paris,* wax, paint, glue,† ether, and rubber everyone can now make, and the wonderfully beautiful results of Hyrtl, Gerlach, Beale, and Thiersch are only equalled by the ingenuity of Chrzonszczewsky, who has recently effected the physiological injection of the bile-ducts by coloring the bile and then tying the hepatic duct. Bidloo, in Amsterdam, in 1685, and Cowper and Nicholls, of Oxford,‡ a little later, added to our means of illustration by injecting the vessels and holtube air-tight by means of friction instead of a screw. The wings by which it is now held were as yet unknown, and were replaced by a hook. He used wax, resin, turpentine, and cinnabar. Hyrtl, op. cit., p. 602.

In the present century, Shaw's "cold paint injection" (see Parson's Anat. Preps., pp. 2, 3, and Horner's Pract. Anat., Introd., pp. xviii and xix, where this is attributed to Allan Ramsay) has been largely used. Bowman's double cold injection by acetate of lead followed by chromate of potash, both in solution, Voigt's solution of glue, Gerlach's of carmine, Beale's of Prussian blue, etc., have all been admirable. No one has done more to advance the art than Hyrtl himself, who was the first to make preparations of two, three, and four different colored injections, and has left no kingdom, family, or genus whose anatomy is not illustrated by his splendid researches. No medical man should visit Philadelphia without inspecting the splendid collection of his injected, and especially his corroded, preparations, recently purchased (1874) by the College of Physicians for the Mütter Museum. They are the most superb specimens of anatomical preparations I have ever seen.

*First used by Trew (Commerc. Liter. Noricum, 1732, p. 298), and now in use generally in this country and in Berlin, while wax in various forms and combinations is used in Edinburgh, London, Heidelberg, Paris, Vienna, etc.

† First used by P. S. Rouhault, Surgeon to the King of Sardinia, 1718; Hyrtl, Zerglied., pp. 589, 590.

Wm. Hunter (Introd. Lect., p. 56), and following him most other English and American writers (e. g., The Gold-headed Cane, p. 129; Horner's Anat., Introd., pp. xiv-xv, note), give the sole credit of this beautiful invention to Professor Nicholls. Hyrtl, however, places the credit further back and of right with Bidloo (Anat. Corp. Human., Amstel., 1685), who injected melted bismuth into the lungs, and Cowper (The Anat. of Human Bodies, Oxford, 1697), who used lead (Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 604). Possibly Nicholls was the first thus to prepare the vessels.