the late Professor RudolphL 233 



could not be sufficiently informed in one branch, and could not 

 contribute anything of consequence, without being perfectly 

 acquainted with all the other branches. Solid knowledge in 

 zoology is also necessary for the productive cultivation of com- 

 parative anatomy. Hence he desired that anatomists should 

 comprehend in their studies human, comparative, and patholo- 

 gical anatomy, although they might not prosecute all these 

 departments with equal fondness ; and he sometimes blamed 

 severely the errors committed by anatomists from imperfections 

 in their studies, from one-sided knowledge, or actual want of 

 information. 



Kudolphi was an opponent of the kind of " Naturphilosophie'** 

 which prevailed for a season. On every occasion he declared 

 his hostility to a species of natural studies combined with a 

 misunderstood philosophy which expressed itself for some time 

 with considerable pretensions, owing to the want of an exact 

 iilethod, and to a strong tendency to generalization. The power- 

 ful observations made by him, in his biography of Pallas, as a 

 warning to students, cannot have been without the desired 

 effect ; and the sentiments are just as remarkable which he has 

 inserted in the article Anatomy, written for the " Encychpa- 

 disches Worterbiich der medicinischen WissenscJuifteny It is 

 not to be doubted that he there recognises the influence of 

 comparative anatomy on the right understanding of the laws 

 of formation. In that essay, as well as in his lectures, he spoke 

 in favour of the existence of a pair of vertebrae in the skull, and 

 only blamed the abuse of this idea, which, I may take this op- 

 portunity of mentioning, neither Goethe, nor Oken, nor Dume- 

 ril first expressed or published, but J. P. Franks who was so 

 fortunate as to throw it out in his work De curandis honiinum 

 morbis, 1792, lib. 11, p, 42. If Rudolphi in his labours en- 

 tered but little on such questions, it might arise from this 

 chiefly, that the arbitrary manner in which the " NaturphUo^ 

 Sophie'''' had treated these subjects had rendered tiie whole 

 matter disagreeable to him. It has sometimes appeared to me 

 as if Rudolphi had, in anatomy, placed too little value on this 

 knowledge of the laws of formation. The discovery that all 

 embryos at an early period have gill-arches on the neck, did 

 not at all suit his ideas ; he suspected deception, and appealed to 



