and special education. The first Russian doctor of philosophy 

 and medicine was P. V. Posnikov, who was sent on a mission 

 to Italy in 169Z and received the scientific degree from the 

 University of Padua. Beginning in 1696, going abroad for 

 educational purposes became more frequent. Contact with the 

 Dutch working in Moscow and his visits to Holland in 

 1697 - 1698 prompted Peter to use the industrial and 

 educational institutions of that country for training the 

 Russian people who were sent abroad. 



The journey of Moscow-born Arnold van der Hulst to 

 Holland for medical education is interesting for the present 

 purposes (6) . In 1717 in Leyden, he defended a dissertation 

 on the subject "Blood circulation in the fetus"!* (Figure 1). 

 The dissertation opens with an interesting two pages dedicated 

 to Russian Czar Peter Alekseevich. Among other praises the 

 author spoke of Peter as the "tireless prospector and liberal 

 distributer of all arts and sciences, whose cause truly 

 benefits mankind." 



The process of conception was regarded by Hulst, from 

 the point of view predominating at that time, as preforma- 

 tionist. He assigned importance to seminal animalcules (which 

 spermatozoids were called); he considered then the true 

 rudiment of the fetus and in the presence of the necessary 

 heat as responsible for its origin (p. 3). Hulst was convinced 

 of the importance of seminal animalcules by his observation 

 of chick embryos, which after some hours of incubation have, 

 according to him, the same structure as that of cock embryos. 

 Both possess swollen heads and curved small bodies. Malpighi 

 had described this as a result of the changes by which they 

 were transformed into chickens. "Similarly," Hulst wrote, 

 "nature acts during the formation of the human body from the 

 semen of men." And he referred to the observations of Ryusch, 

 who during the dissection of a woman's corpse a short time 

 after conception, saw, for the first time, a human embryo, 

 completely similar in form with those worms which Leeuwenhoek 

 had discovered in male semen. "We are not afraid to conclude," 

 Hulst wrote, "that animalcules, which were observed by 



11. Arnold van der Hulst, DISPUTATIO MEDICA INAUGURALIS 

 DE CIRCULATIONE SANGUINIS IN FOETU, June 1717, 

 Ludini Batav, 26 pp. 



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