



LIFE AND WORKS OF NICOLAUS STENO XIII 



because they relied so implicitly upon researches made by those who 

 had gone before them, perhaps did not always make such observa* 

 tions as were before their very eyes, Steno, together with the best of 

 his age, Harvey, Sylvius, Borelli, Malpighi and Swammerdam, was first 

 and foremost an observer and an experimentalist. He observed the 

 phenomena in a calm, unprejudiced and natural manner and thus 

 discovered what, because of their preconceived ideas, most of his con* 

 temporaries had failed to see. The number of new and important 

 discoveries, which are due to Steno, is exceedingly great, and yet we 

 do not here find the full expression either of his talent or of his sig* 

 nificance. His genius reveals itself in the conclusions, which he draws 

 from his discoveries, and in the generalizations which he makes. His 

 conclusions are not only astonishing by their number, but still more 

 by their soundness and clearness, and yet perhaps most of all admirable 

 by their correctness and their scope, being such that in some cases 

 they have not been fully appreciated until now, some two hundred 

 and fifty years after their first appearance. Still there is one fact, which 

 may perhaps help to throw further light on Steno's scientific per* 

 sonality. At a time when most natural philosophers were, before all, 

 physicians who looked upon natural science as the auxiliary of medicine, 

 Steno himself never practised as a physician, and in his researches 

 very rarely touched upon questions of a purely medical character. 



As mentioned above, Steno made his first discovery in Amsterdam The 

 on April 7, 1660, when, being engaged in dissecting the head of a Glandsand 

 sheep, he found the parotid duct. He called Blaes, who declared not to f i yT T _ 

 know this duct and referred him to Wharton's work on the glands, p st * m c y ~ 

 published in 1656. As Steno neither here nor anywhere else found any 

 positive information concerning this question, he continued his inve* 

 stigations, and when shortly afterwards he went to Leyden, he showed 

 his discovery to Sylvius and van Home, of whom the former was the 

 first to find the parotid duct in man, the latter the first to demonstrate 

 it in public, naming it after Steno. 



Through this first discovery of his Steno was led to study the ana* 

 tomy and physiology of the glands and the lymphatic system. With 

 regard to the glands Steno found in the first place that, what had 

 hitherto been called the parotis, had really to be distinguished as two 

 separate glands, of which the one secreted saliva through the duct 

 found by him, and the other, an ordinary lymphatic gland, belonged 

 to the lymphatic system. The former or these Steno classed among 

 Sylvius' glandulx conglomerate, the latter among his glandulx conglo= 

 batx. Furthermore he found that lymphatics were running from 

 parotis conglomerata to parotis conglobata, and that another lymphatic 

 vessel ran to a gland lying further below, his glandula communis, 

 which received vessels also from a conglobate gland close to the sub* 



