that the translated and edited volume can prove useful, as 

 indicated in more detail below. 



OUTLINE OF BLYAKHER' S WORK 



In fact, this book represents only half of Blyakher 's 

 HISTORY OF EMBRYOLOGY IN RUSSIA, covering only the 

 mid-eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century. A brief dis- 

 cussion of the second volume, covering the mid-nineteenth 

 to the mid-twentieth century, appears in a review by Charles 

 Bodemer in ISIS. While that second volume describes 

 material less well-known to western historians of science 

 and while it might therefore seem more valuable, this volume 

 is intriguing in part precisely because it deals with appar- 

 ently familiar figures and works from a different perspec- 

 tive which is distinctly, though on the whole not zealously, 

 patriotically Russian. Blyakher claims that those recognized 

 great embryologists, Kaspar Friedrich Wolff, Khristian 

 Pander, and Karl Maksimovich Baer - heretofore considered 

 German embryologists - were in fact distinctly Russian, and 

 that their Russian connections define their scientific 

 characters and help explain their successes in important 

 ways. This Russian viewpoint is the first of the book's two 

 major offerings. 



The second lies in the description and catalog of 

 essentially inaccessible works and the compiling of several 

 descriptions into a single narrative index of sorts. Blyakher 

 discusses works of major embryologists which can be located 

 only with difficulty. For example, even though they appeared 

 in German (which can be read by more English speakers than 

 Russian can), many of the papers cited appeared in some of 

 the little-circulated publications of the St. Petersburg 

 Academy of Science. Thus, Blyakher provides new descriptions 

 which he combines with discussion of other both major well- 

 known and relatively rare sources. Since many of these sources 

 are little known, little circulated, inaccessible, or dif- 

 ficult to read because of the archaic scientific detail or 

 descriptive style, Blyakher has performed a valuable service 

 by describing them. 



