SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 159 

 After his father's death he took up medicine, studying first in Germany and 

 then under Albinus at Leyden, where he took his degree with a treatise 

 entitled De valvula colt. After paying visits to England and France, he settled 

 down in Berlin as a practitioner. He died in 1756. His short life and his 

 extensive practice prevented him from benefiting science as much as he other- 

 wise would certainly have been able to do, yet what he did achieve ensures 

 to him a place in the history of biology. He was above all an excellent 

 technician. He himself made microscopes of splendid workmanship and was 

 able to prepare under the microscope the most minute organic details. 

 Equally remarkable were his injections; preparations made by his own hand 

 are still preserved in the anatomical museum in Berlin. In fact, he used the 

 microscope for the purpose of studying injection-preparations, a thing which 

 had never been done before. His only really important work is his exposition 

 of the structure of the small intestine, in which he describes the Lieberkiihn- 

 ian crypts (called after him), as also those cells existing at the bottom 

 thereof, now called the Panethian cells, whose glandular nature, however, 

 he failed to discover. The whole work bears witness to his technical skill 

 both in injections and in microscopy, and forms a valuable contribution to 

 the development of microscopical anatomy. 



Another pupil of Albinus's, who won a far greater reputation in his own 

 age, was Petrus Camper. He was born at Leyden in 17x2., studied there, and 

 took degrees in both philosophy and medicine. Having spent a couple of 

 years travelling, he was appointed professor at the academy at Franeker, 

 a small provincial university which, when he first went there, had only 

 four medical students, a number which he succeeded in increasing many 

 times over in a very short time. After five years, however, he obtained a 

 professorship in Amsterdam, and some time later one in Groningen, but he 

 finally gave up teaching and settled at The Hague, where he became a member 

 of the state council and took part in its political life. He died in 1789. 



Camper is described as a man of an extremely superior personality, 

 brilliantly gifted, but quick-tempered and despotic. In his own time he was 

 regarded as one of the leading scholars in Europe and attained a splendid 

 position, both socially and financially. His many-sidedness was extraordi- 

 nary, almost reminiscent of Olof Rudbeck's. Besides carrying out anatomical 

 research in a number of different fields, he was a surgeon and gynaecologist, 

 hygienist, and expert in medical law and veterinary surgery, and in all these 

 spheres he made valuable contributions. He was, besides, an excellent draughts- 

 man and a leading connoisseur of art. He took measurements of the facial 

 angle in human beings of different ages and different races, and in comparison 

 therewith in higher vertebrates, with results of interest both to the history 

 of art and to natural science. This facial angle, which still bears Camper's 

 name, is formed by two lines, the one extending through the opening of 



