NATURE 



577 



THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 18S0 



SCIENTIFIC WORTHIES 

 XVI.— Richard Owen 



AMONG time-honoured sayings there is none the truth 

 of which comes more frequently home to the scientific 

 worker than that which reminds him that a prophet is not 

 without honour save in his own country and among his 

 own kin. Its very truth would seem to make it short of 

 impossible for us to take full cognisance of our own Scien- 

 tific Worthies. The subject of this notice, still in hale 

 strength, though now in full years and full of honours, is 

 however in a very great measure an exception to the 

 above proverb. Foreign men of science and foreign 

 countries when they came to offer him their rewards 

 found him already decorated. That a life abounding in 

 labour, some of the results of which will remain as the 

 heritage of mankind, was not undeserving of human 

 recompense the following lines will abundantly show. 



Richard Owen was born on July 20, 1804. He matri- 

 culated in the University of Edinburgh in 1824. Entering 

 Bartholomew's Hospital the following year, he took the 

 diploma of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1S26. In 

 1825 he visited Paris, making the acquaintance of Baron 

 Cuvier. On the completion of his medical studies Mr. 

 Owen settled down to practise in Serle Street, Lincoln's 

 Inn Fields. While at Bartholomew's Hospital he had 

 been one of Dr. Abernethy's dissectors, and in 1828, on 

 Dr. Abernethy's suggestion, he was employed at the 

 College of Surgeons to make the catalogue of the 

 Hunterian Collection in that institution. J\Ir. Clift was 

 the Conservator of the College Museum at this time. 

 The first catalogue of the invertebrate animals in spirits 

 was published by the College in 1830, and in the follow- 

 ing year appeared the memoir on the Pearly Nautilus 

 {A^aii/ihis pompiliiis), with some excellent drawings from 

 the author's pencil. 



The Zoological Society of London had been at this 

 time in existence for some years, but up to 1830 it can 

 scarcely be said to have had any scientific life. Some few 

 of the then Fellows determined it should be otherwise, and 

 after some little opposition the Council of the Society 

 allowed the formation of a committee of science, who 

 were further permitted to publish their own Proceedings. 

 The first meeting of this committee was held on November 

 9, 1830, at which Owen read a paper on the anatomy of 

 the Orang-Utan. It is not without interest to note that 

 at the next meeting, held December 28, 1830, a letter was 

 read from \'aughan Thompson, mentioning his discovery 

 of a metamorphosis in Crustacea. From 1830 to the 

 present date the contributions to the Transactions and 

 the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of Mr. Owen 

 have been both numerous and important, and for many 

 years he was the unpaid prosector to the Society. He 

 also at this period read several papers on pathological 

 subjects before the Medical Society of St. Bartholomew's 

 and the Medical and Chirurgical Society of London, one 

 of the most remarkable of which was that describing 

 the anatomical results of the ligature of the internal 

 iliac artery, by Dr. Stevens, at Santa Cruz in 1812. 



In 1834 a Chair of Comparative Anatomy was founded 

 Vol. XXII. — No. 573 



for Mr. Owen at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. In the 

 year 183J he published an account of a remarkable 

 nematoid worm found living in the muscles of the human 

 body ( Trichina spiralis), and giving rise to a serious and 

 often fatal disease called trichinosis, since, unfortunately, 

 too well known. In 1834 he was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society, and in the same year was appointed the 

 first Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons. 

 This chair he continued to fill until 1855. Mr. Owen, on 

 succeeding his father-in-law, Mr. Clift, as Conservator of 

 the Museum of the College of Surgeons, gradually retired 

 from professional practice, and after a short time devoted 

 himself exclusively to scientific pursuits. Of the thirty 

 years during which he worked at Lincoln's Inn Fields, the 

 last twenty were mainly spent in the study of comparative 

 anatomy. A very rapid survey of the immense amount 

 of work accomplished by him during this period will not 

 be without interest. The catalogue of the physiological 

 specimens in the Hunterian Collection consists of five 

 quarto volumes, whioh were published by the Council of 

 the College of Surgeons between 1833 and 1840. The 

 catalogue of osteological specimens is contained in two 

 quarto volumes published in 1853, and that of the Fossil 

 Vertebrates and Cephalopods in three quarto volumes 

 published in 1855. 



The great work on the study of teeth was issued 

 between 1S40-1845. In preparing the drawings for this 

 work Prof Owen was threatened with an attack of 

 retinitis, and was compelled to commit the further prepa- 

 ration of the illustrations to the excellent artists Lens 

 Aldous and Erxleben. 



The well-known Lectures on Comparative Anatomy 

 and Physiology appeared between 1843 and 1846. After a 

 one-and- twenty years' study of the homologies of the 

 vertebrate skeleton, Prof. Owen's era-marking work on 

 the "Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate 

 Skeleton " was published. After having made a certain 

 progress in comparative anatomy the eviderces of a 

 greater conformity to type, especially in the bones of the 

 head of the vertebrate animals, than the immortal Cuvier 

 had been willing to admit, began to enforce on Prof. Owen 

 a re-consideration of Cuvier's conclusions to which for 

 long he had yielded implicit assent. The results of these 

 reconsiderations were successively communicated to the 

 Royal College of Surgeons of England in the Course of 

 Hunterian Lectures for 1844-45, and a sketch of his 

 general views on the subject was laid before the British 

 Association at Southampton in 1846. In 1849 were 

 published the memoirs " On the Nature of Limbs," and 

 "On Parthenogenesis." The term "jx'rthenogenesis " 

 was devised to replace a phrase somewhat cumbrous and 

 incorrect, which was to this time applied to designate a 

 phenomenon as interesting as strange. 



Nor was all this sufficient for the superabundant energy 

 of the Hunterian professor. The Pateontological Society 

 succeeded in enlisting his services for a series of mono- 

 graphs of British fossil vertebrates, and during this period 

 were published a memoir on the " Fossil Chelonian Rep- 

 tiles of the Purbeck Limestones and Wealden Clays" 

 (1853), the various supplements to which date from 1859 

 to 1879; "On the Fossil Reptiles of the London Clay" 

 (1849, 1850), the portion of this memoir relating to the 

 Chelonia was in part written by the late Prof Bell ; " On 



C C 



