view, Kramarenkov referred to such authors as Johannes 

 Miiller and Hufeland, citing appropriate quotations from 

 their reports. 



To characterize the biological ideas from the department 

 at Moscow University over a twenty- to thirty-year period, 

 we must give the opinions of A. L. Lovetskii, who was considered 

 at that time to be its leading professor. His book, INITIAL 

 INSCRIPTION OF NATURAL HISTORY, had for a long time 

 been well regarded as a guide for students. A. L. Lovetskii 

 C1787 - 1840), a physician and naturalist, gave presentations 

 mainly for courses of zoology and mineralogy. In MY PAST AND 

 THOUGHTS 50 Hertzen wrote disrespectfully about him, from 

 which a negative impression could be formed about his scientific 

 and teaching activities. Lovetskii suggested the spontaneous 

 development of organisms, which appears to express the Natur- 

 philosophie idea of the development of organisms from the 

 products of decomposition of living creatures. 



Lovetskii 's and Vellaskii's ideas came from the idealistic 

 and metaphysical notion of eternity and the unchangeable nature 

 of the organic monads as germs or embryos of living creatures. 



In 1824 Lovetskii published a paper "On the Initial 

 Conception of Worms in Animal Bodies. "51 Concerning opinions 

 on the spontaneous development of parasitic worms, Lovetskii 

 wrote: 



The observations of some scientists give grounds for 

 the assumption and the defense of those ridiculous 

 opinions affirming that they have seen intestinal 

 worms outside the animal body. These opinions are 

 disproved by the following conditions : a) there are 

 no true and exact observations about the presence of 

 these worms living outside the body; b) worms that 

 are discharged from the body soon die; c) the genera 

 and types of worms are as variable as the types of 

 the animals in which they live; d) the worms are found 



50. Hertzen, MY PAST AND THOUGHTS, section VI, p. 68. 



51. Lovetskii, in NEW MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY, 

 PHYSICS, CHEMISTRY, AND ECONOMIC INFORMATION, 

 edited by I. A. Ovigubskii, Part 2 (1830), pp. 17 - 34, 

 87 - 108. 



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