CHAPTER IX 



KARL ERNST VON BAER 



VON BAER was recognised as the founder of embryology 

 even by his contemporaries. His predecessors, Aristotle, 1 

 Fabricius, 2 Harvey, 3 Malpighi, 4 Haller, 5 Wolff, had made a 

 beginning with the study of development ; von Baer, by the 

 thoroughness of his observation and the strength of his 

 analysis, made embryology a science. 



It was to one of the German transcendentalists that von 

 Baer owed the impulse to study development. Ignatius 

 Dollinger, Professor in Wiirzburg, induced three of his pupils, 

 Pander, d'Alton and von Baer, to devote themselves to 

 embryological research. The development of animals was 

 at this time little known, in spite of recent work by Meckel 

 (1815 and 1817), Tiedemann {Anatoinie 21. Bildungsgeschichte 

 des GcJiirns, 1816), by Oken (Joe. cit., supra, p. 90), and some 

 others. 



Pander, with whom apparently Dollinger and d'Alton 

 collaborated, was the first to publish his results; 7 von Baer, 

 who through absence from Wiirzburg had for a time dropped 

 his embryological studies, started to work in 1819, after the 

 publication of Pander's treatise, and produced in 1828 the 

 first volume of his master- work, UeberEntwickelungsgeschichte 



I De generatione Aniinalium. 



' De formato fa'/u, ? 1600 ; De forinatione fattus, 1604. 



3 Exercitationes de generatione animaliuui, 1651. 



4 De forinatione pulli in ovo, 1673 '> De ovo incubato, 1686. 



5 De fonnatione pulli in ovo, 1757-8 ; Sur la formation du cccur dans 

 le poulet, 1758. 



II Theoria genera tionis, 1759 ; De fo rmatione intestinorinn, 1768-9. 



7 Beitrcige zur Entivickclung des Hiihnchens im Ei. Wiirzburg, 1818. 

 Also in Latin in shorter form, 1817. 



ns 



