RISE OF COMPARATIVE ANATOMY Ho 



Zootomia Democritce. The title was derived from the Roman 

 naturalist Democrita?us, and the date of its publication, 16^5, 

 places the treatise earlier than the works of Malpighi, Leeu- 

 wenhoek, and Swammerdam. The book is illustrated bv 

 numerous coarse woodcuts, showing the internal organs of 

 fishes, birds, and some mammals. There are also a few 

 illustrations of stages in the development of these animals. 

 The comparisons were superficial and incidental; neverthe- 

 less, as the first attempt, after the revival of anatomy, to 

 make the subject comparative, it has some especial interest. 

 Severinus (Fig. 37) should be recognized as beginning the 

 line of comparative anatomists which led u]) to Cu\'ier. 



Forerunners of Cuvier. — Anatomical studies bei^^an to 

 take on broad features with the work of Camper, John 

 Hunter, and Vicq d'Azyr. These three men paved the ^vay 

 for Cuvier, but it must be said of the two former that their 

 comparisons were limited and unsystematic. 



Cam.per, whose portrait is shown in Fig. 2>^y was born in 

 Leyden, in 1722. He was a versatile man, having a taste 

 for drawing, painting, and sculpture, as well as for scientific 

 studies. He received his scientific training under Boerhaave 

 and other eminent men in Leyden, and became a professor 

 and, later, rector in the University of Groningen. Possessing 

 an ample fortune, and also having married a rich wife, he 

 was in position to follow his ov/n tastes. He travelled exten- 

 sivelv and gathered a larcre collection of skeletons. He 

 showed considerable talent as an anatomist, and he made 

 several discoveries, which, however, he did not develop, but 

 left to others. Perliaps the possession of riches was one of 

 his limitations; at any rate, he lacked fixity of i)urpose. 



Among his discoveries may be nientioned the semicircu- 

 lar canals in theearof fishes, the fact that the bones of fiying 

 birds are permeated by air, the determination of some fossil 

 bones, with the suggestion that they belonged to extinct forms. 



