sfecT. 3] AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES 161 



the tender Embryo of the Chick soon after the Punctum saliens is 

 discoverable, and whilst the bodie seems but a little organized Gelly, 

 and some while after that, will be this way preserv'd, without being 

 too much shrivel'd up, I was hindred by some mischances to satisfie 

 myself; but when the Faetus's, I took out, were so perfectly formed 

 as they were wont to be about the seventh day, and after, they so 

 well retained thjeir shape and bulk, as to make me not repent of my 

 curiosity; And some of those, which I did very early this Spring, I can 

 yet shew you. 



Boyle said in conclusion that he sometimes also "added Sal 

 Armoniack, abounding in a salt not sowre but urinous". 



In the same year that Nymmanus' book appeared, Nicholas 

 Stensen, that great anatomist, later a Bishop, who was also to all 

 intents and purposes the founder of geology, published his De musculis 

 et glandulis specimen, in which Goiter's observations on the vitelline 

 duct and the general relations between embryo and yolk in the hen's 

 tgg were made again and confirmed. About this time also Deusingius 

 described his case of abdominal pregnancy, and was thus the first 

 anatomist to draw attention to this phenomenon. 



In 1667 Stensen published his Elementorum myologiae specimen, in 

 which he described the female genital organs of dogfishes. He 

 demonstrated eggs in them and affirmed that the "testis" of women 

 ought to be regarded as exactly the same organ as the "ovary" or 

 "roe" of ovipara. At the time he carried the suggestion no further, 

 but it was an extremely fruitful one, and it is surprising that it did 

 not create more interest, for it was exactly what Harvey had been 

 looking for. Nothing obvious having been found in the uteri of King 

 Charles' does, and the conviction yet being very strong that viviparous 

 conceptions really came from eggs, Stensen's minute ova supplied 

 the fitting answer to the question. Thus Harvey and Stensen between 

 them substituted the modern knowledge of mammalian ova for the 

 ancient theory of the coagulum all in the space of fourteen years. The 

 other event for which the year 1667 is remarkable is the De Formato 

 Foetu of Walter Needham. Needham was a Cambridge physician 

 who went to Oxford to study in the active school of physiological 

 research which such men as Christopher Wren, Richard Lower, John 

 Ward and Thomas Willis were making famous. His book on the 

 formation of the embryo, written later (and dedicated to Robert 

 Boyle), after he had been in practice in Shropshire for some time. 



