" What necessity could there be to employ the words nates, testes, anus, vulva, and 

 penis, which in their common signification have no relation at all to the parts expressed 

 by them in the anatomy of the brain ? And accordingly what one author calls nates, 

 another calls testes, etc." 



To Florence, then under the Medici and a centre of great 

 intellectual activity, he went in 1666. The Grand Duke Ferdinand II. 

 and his brother Prince Leopold greatly encouraged science, and, on 

 the recommendation of Thevenot, the Grand Duke made Stensen his 

 physician and gave him a pension as Court Physician. The results of 

 his further study of muscles he sent to T. Bartholin. The work itself, 

 Elewentorum Myologiva Specimen (1667), he dedicated to Ferdinand II. 

 He regarded myology as a part of mathematics. In considering the 

 contraction of a muscle, he opposes the view that the swelling and 

 hardening are due to the influx of juices. He regarded muscles as 

 parallelepipeds and treated of muscular action from a mechanical 

 standpoint. His dissection of the head of a dog-fish (Car char iax) led 

 him to geology, for the teeth of this animal led him to see that the 

 glossopetra; were really fossil teeth. Stensen was brought up in the 

 Lutheran faith. He joined the Catholic Church on 2nd November, 

 1667, and what is called his " conversion " excited great interest 

 in the scientific world. Here is the story. As physician to the 

 hospital Sta. Maria Nuova, he had occasion to go to the apothecary 

 of the cloister, where he met Sister Maria Flava del Nero, who 

 attended upon the apothecary. She soon learned that the great 

 anatomist was what she regarded as a " heretic," and set to work to 

 secure him for the Catholic Church. She succeeded; her offices 

 being supplemented by those of Lavinia Felice. 



In 1672 he was invited to return to Copenhagen to occupy the 

 Chair of Anatomy, but he filled it with little success his mind was 

 filled with other ideas and he quitted his native town in 1674 and 

 returned to Florence. Theology and geology had for some years 

 engrossed his attention. The results of his geological investigations 

 on stratification of rock, fossils, <fec., were published in his treatise 

 De Solido intra Solidum, &c., in 1669. He is regarded as one of the 

 founders of modern geology. Before he returned to Copenhagen he 

 received the titular honour of Bishop of Titiopolis in Greece. He 

 started northward with the idea of securing the allegiance of northern 

 Europe to the Catholic faith. After quitting Copenhagen he laboured 

 as a priest in Hanover and Schwerin, wearing himself out in constant 

 labour for the principles of his newly-acquired faith. Worn out at 

 the age of forty-eight, he died in 1686. His remains were interred in 

 the Basilica San Lorenzo in Florence, and over them was erected, in 

 1883, by geologists of all nations, his bust, with a suitable dedication. 

 (Der Dane Niels Stensen, by W. Plenkers, S.J., Freiburg in 

 Breisgau, 1884.) 



