VOL. XX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 22g 



Ruijschjo,* M. D. Botan. Profess. &c. et Francisco Kiggelario, Amst. l697- 



N° 236, p. 29. 



This work is none of the least specimens of modern magnificence and im- 



death by Ruysch, he was author of the following : The Hesperides of the Netherlands, written in 

 the Dutch language, folio, 1676; and Catalogus Plant. Indigen Hollandiae, 12mo. l683. He also 

 bore a principal part of the labour of arranging, annotating, and editing the Hortus Malabaricus. 



* Frederic Ruysch was born at the Hague in l638, and studied at Leyden under Van Home. 

 After he had taken his degree of M. D. he practised for some time at the Hague ; but in 1666 he 

 removed to Amsterdam, having accepted the offer of the anatomical professorship there. He was 

 afterwards appointed to the botanical chair ; and he moreover gave lectures on midwifery. Here he 

 formed that fine collection of anatomical preparations and of curiosiiies in natural history, which 

 attracted the notice of all foreigners who visited Amsterdam. That enlightened Prince, the Czar 

 Peter the Great, who left no source of information untried, and whose object in seeking information 

 was his country's good, took a particular interest in examining this museum during his first travels 

 (169s) into Holland, and even honoured its possessor (whose diet was as simple as his manners) by 

 dining at his board ; and on his second visit in 17 17, the Czar purchased this celebrated collection, 

 and had it conveyed to Petersburgh for the use of the Medical College there. Although Ruysch was 

 now ill his 79th year, he resolved to collect another Museum, to supply the place of that which 

 he had sold; and this he actually accomplished during the 13 remaining years of his life, with the 

 assistance of his son (who died 4 years before him) and daughter ; whom the f.ither had rendered 

 very expert in the use of the dissectingknife and injecting apparatus. Ruysch died in 1731, at the 

 advanced age of 02. He was a member of the Parisian Academy of Sciences and of the Royal 

 Society of London. A biographical account of him, in Latin, was published by Schreiber in 1732, 

 and he is among the number of those who have been eulogized by Fontenelle. His 2d anatomical 

 collection was sold by auction after his death, and the best part of it was bought by the king of 

 Poland, for the use of the University of Wittenberg. 



Among the principal of Ruysch's works should be mentioned his dissertation De Vasis lyin- 

 phaticis, 1C65 ; his Epist. Anatom. 1696" ; his Thesaur. Anat. exhibiting representations of the most 

 remarkable preparations in his Museum, and consisting of 1 1 parts or fasciculi, published suc- 

 cessively between the years 1701 and 1728, and his Adversaria Anat. in 3 decades, published in 

 1717, 1720, and 1723. These and some other writings make 4 vols. -Ito. enriched with a vast num- 

 ber of plates. 



Ruysch excelled in the art of injecting the blood-vessels ; an art which he learned from his coun- 

 trymen and contemporaries de Graaf and Swaminerdam, upon whose methods, however, he greatly 

 improved ; filling the vessels, through all their minute ramifications more completely than any pre- 

 ceding anatomists had done ; and inventing a varnish which, while it heightened the beauty of their 

 appearance, defended them from moisture and other injurious impressions of the atmosphere. We 

 are indebted to Ruysch for the discovery of some parts in the animal structure that were before 

 unknown, and for a more complete investigation of other parts. Thus ht discovered the inner la- 

 mina of the tunica choroidea,. called after him membrana Ruyschiana ; he traced the ciliary nerves 

 and ciliary processes with remarkable accuracy; he demonstrated wj.h great perspicuity the valvular 

 structure of the lymphatics ; and he showed that certain visceral parts, which Malpighi had represented 

 as being of a folliculo-glandular structure, consist wholly of minute vessels or lubes, without any 

 intervening cells or follicles. He moreover thought he had discovered an orbicular mcscle in the 

 fundus uteri; but this has eluded the research of succeeding anatomists. It is not, however, so 



