FOREWORD* 



No DETAILED biographical study of Purkinje has as yet been written but 

 several excellent summaries are readily available (Heidenhain/ Robin- 

 son= and Hykes'). Here it will suffice to indicate the place of the Symbolae ad 

 Ovi Avium Historiam in his scientific career. The monograph has received 

 only cursory attention in the various reviews of his work (Eiselt/ Thomsen,' 

 Studnicka') and none of the authors appears to have read it. Indeed one biog- 

 rapher sagely remarks that it reports the "discovery of the sperm cell in the 

 eg'g of the hen"! The work was first published (1825) as a "Gratulationsbrief 

 an Blumenbach'" sent by the medical faculty at Breslau as a tribute to the 

 "Nestor among Naturalists" on the fiftieth anniversary of his doctorate. Pur- 

 kinje's study was chosen in spite of the fact that his appointment only two 

 years previously had aroused a storm of resentment in the medical faculty. 

 The situation was as follows: The first chair of physiology in Germany was 

 created in 1811 when the University at Frankfurt-an-der-Odcr was reorgan- 

 ized and moved to Breslau. The chair became vacant when Bartels left in 

 1821 and the Prussian Ministry of Education appointed Purkinje, in spite of 

 the protests of the Curator and Medical Faculty who were especially dis- 

 pleased at the introduction of a Czech into the faculty. Nationalistic animosities 

 seem to have been as violent at Breslau near the Polish border as at Prague 

 where quarrels between Czechs and Germans disturbed Purkinje's later years. 



The appointment at Breslau was made on the advice of Geheimrat J. N. 

 Rust who had been most favorably impressed by Purkinje when he met him 

 at Prague in 1817. The candidate had also been endorsed by Goethe, Alex- 

 ander von Humboldt and K. A. Rudolphi, the professor of anatomy at Berlin. 

 Goethe Avas still much interested in his Farhentheorie and his attention had 

 been attracted by Purkinje's doctor's dissertation (Beitrdge zur Kenntniss des 

 Sehens in Subjectiver Hinsicht, 1819). They did not meet personally until 

 after the matter of the Breslau professorship had been settled. 



Purkinje undertook to write the "Gratulationsbrief in May, 1825, and in 

 the following September it was sent to Blumenbach. It has been suggested that 

 the investigation was begun, completed, and the paper written during the 

 summer of 1825, but there appears to be no evidence for this. 



The need for the second edition of the Syynbolae (1830) is set forth in Pur- 

 kinje's "Praejatio." The following translation was made from this revised and 

 augmented version. Only this edition is included in the volume of Purkinje's 

 Opera Omnia^ (1918). He made further observations on the bird's egg be- 

 tween 1825 and 1830, notably on the formation of the shell membrane, but 

 most of the changes were the results of "Reflexion" after the original had been 

 sent to Blumenbach. 



* This study was aided by a grant from the Dr. ^Vallacc C. and Clara A. Abbott Memorial 

 Fund of the University of Chicago. 



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