138 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



his bibliographical works — Bibliotheca anatomica, botanka, and chirurgica — 

 in which he has compiled information regarding all the literature published 

 till then in various spheres of science. These "bibliotheca" are even in modern 

 times of importance to the student of scientific literature and are remarkable 

 for their completeness, though also unfortunately for the mass of misprints 

 which mar their utility. 



Mailer's refutation 

 Haller has been very diversely judged. On the one hand, he has been re- 

 garded both by his own age and by posterity as the foremost anatomist 

 and physiologist of his century and as the founder of modern experimental 

 physiology, while on the other, as has so often been the case with scientists 

 of many-sided interests, he has been accused by specialists of unreliability 

 in points of detail. His great service, particularly to the development of 

 physiology, can, however, never with justice be denied; his experimental 

 method and its results are undoubtedly of fundamental significance. As re- 

 gards his general conception of life, on the other hand, Haller has to a 

 certain extent stood at an old-time view-point, just as in his writings he 

 summarized the results hitherto attained. This to some extent explains how it 

 came about that the immediately succeeding age picked a quarrel with him; 

 thus, Goethe finds fault with him for his views on the limitations of the 

 knowledge of nature, which, it is true, are but little in accordance with 

 natural-philosophical speculation; but above all he fell foul of a contem- 

 porary scientist who, starting out from an entirely different standpoint and 

 having different preconceptions, arrived at an entirely opposed fundamental 

 view in regard to science — namely. La Mettrie. 



JuLiEN Offroy de La Mettrie was born in 1709 at Saint-Malo in Brit- 

 tany. His father was a wealthy merchant, who had his son brought up to be 

 a priest. He studied theology in Paris and there joined the Jansenistic sect, a 

 movement in the French Church known for the strictness of its rules and 

 ideas, but disfavoured and persecuted by the Government. A physician in 

 his native town, however, succeeded in awaking in the young theologian 

 an interest in his profession, and so it came about that La Mettrie began 

 to study medicine, first in Paris and then at Leyden under Boerhaave. Having 

 passed his examination, he set up in practice for a time in his native town 

 and then became physician to a regiment of guards in Paris; by that time 

 he seemed to have prospects of making a brilliant career, as he was well 

 known both for his successful cures and as a witty and refined man, with 

 social aptitudes. But these high hopes soon had to be abandoned. He had 

 begun his scientific writing by translating into French some of his master 

 Boerhaave's more important works. This was viewed with disfavour by the 

 high-conservative medical faculty in Paris, which had consistently opposed 

 Boerhaave's theories, just as at one time it had opposed those of Vesalius 



