106 Malpighi and the Physiology [lect. 



The next step was taken by Nicolas Stensen, in Latin, 

 Nicolaus Steno, the Dane of whom I have already spoken, and 

 who in J 661 discovered and in the following year described the 

 duct of the parotid gland, since called by his name. 



Before speaking of this part of Stensen's work, I should like 

 to say a few words about the life of this remarkable man. 



Born at Copenhagen on January 10, 1638, his father being 

 a court jeweller, zealous beyond measure in Lutheran doctrines, 

 he studied medical subjects first in his native city under 

 Bartholin, who assisted largely in the development of the 

 knowledge of the lymphatics then taking place, subsequently 

 at Leyden under Sylvius, of whom I shall later on have to 

 speak, and later on under Blasius at Amsterdam. It was 

 while at work dissecting in the house of the latter that he 

 made his discovery of the duct. 



His studies however had not been narrowly medical ; as 

 shewn by his work on muscle of which we spoke, he had laid 

 a firm hold on the new mathematical and physical learning. 



After publishing in 1662, while as yet a young man of 

 twenty-four years, his Observationes Anatomicce relating his 

 discovery of the parotid duct, he travelled much in Germany, 

 France, and other countries, mixing with learned men, learning 

 not a. little and also teaching not a little wherever he went. It 

 is said that at Paris he attracted the attention of the great 

 Bossuet, who desired to convert him to the Catholic religion, 

 but Stensen told him that he was far too busily occupied with 

 science to be able to attend to such matters. At one of his 

 visits to Paris he was invited to deliver at a meeting of learned 

 men held in the house of Thevenot, a discourse on the Anatomy 

 of the Brain. In this discourse, published in 1669, which we 

 have already quoted, he criticizes in a fearless and severe 

 manner, from the point of view of the exact anatomist and 

 physiologist, the fanciful and popular views put forth by 

 Descartes. 



After a while, in 1666, he came to Italy, staying some time 

 in Padua, and then going on to Pisa. Here he attracted so 

 much attention that Ferdinand II. invited him to Florence to 

 be Court Physician, a post in which Cosimo III. on his sue- 



