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determined his action. He entered into a dispute with some one on 

 a public track-boat about the doctrines of Spinoza, and he was by- 

 and-by regarded as a Spinozist, although, in his thesis of 1690 — De 

 distinctiotie Mentis a Corpore, The Distinction between Body and Mind 

 — he had vigorously assailed the doctrines of Spinoza. He studied 

 hard, and appeared to have acquired his knowledge largely by 

 private study, though he appears to have attended the course of 

 Drelincourt and Nuck. He took the degree of M.D. in the 

 University of Harderwick in 1693. In 1701 he succeeded Drelin- 

 court, first as Lecturer, and, in 1709, as Professor of Medicine and 

 also of Botany, as successor to Hotton. His success, as a lecturer 

 and teacher, was such that the authorities increased his emoluments, 

 and gave him unlimited scope for his unbounded energy, by making 

 him, in 1715 — after Bidloo's death in 1715 — Professor of Practical 

 Medicine, and, in 1716, Professor of Chemistry as well, as successor to 

 Le Mort. Indeed, he was a whole " Medical Faculty in himself." 

 In 1710 he published his Index Plantarum, but his two most famous 

 books are his Institutiones Medico?, &c, 1708 — which passed through 

 fifteen editions — and his Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis Morbis, 

 &c, 1709. These for long formed the leading text books on these 

 subjects in all the Schools of Europe. In 1731 his Elementa Chemicce 

 appeared. Already, in 1712, his reputation was so great that, on his 

 recovery from his first severe attack of gout, the town of Leyden was 

 illuminated and a general holiday declared. In 1729 he gave up the 

 Chair of Botany and Chemistry. In 1730 he was admitted to the 

 Royal Society of London. He died, with the symptoms of hydro- 

 thorax, on September 23rd, 1738. He assisted in the re-publication 

 of many works of the older anatomists : Eustachius (1707) ; Vesalius, 

 jointly with B. and B. S. Albinus (1725), but probably the latter 

 wrote most of the additions (the plate marked " Vesalius Demon- 

 strating" is from this edition); Bellini, De Urinis, Pulsibus (1730) ; 

 J. Swammerdam, Historic/, Insectorum, sive Biblia Naturce (1737), a 

 work to which we have already referred. 



RENE A. F. DE REAUMUR. 



1683-1757. 



TOWARDS the end of the seventeenth century there was born in 

 the old Huguenot town of La Rochelle — famous in scientific 

 story as the place where Walsh made his first experiments on 

 electrical phenomena of the torpedo (1773), and in political history by 

 its famous siege — one who stands out as one of the most versatile and 

 strikingly original scientific men of all time. His private means 



