CHAPTER 23 



BAER'S TEP.ATOLOGICAL WORKS AND HIS EMBRYOLOGICAL REPORTS, 

 RELATED TO THE PERIOD OF HIS WORK IN PETERSBURG 



Baer was not a pioneer of teratological investigations in 

 Russia. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Anatomical 

 Museum of the Academy of Science had available a significant 

 collection of preparations demonstrating the abnormal develop- 

 ment of man and different animals. Before the arrival of 

 K. F. Wolff in Russia, the materials of these collections had 

 been little investigated, excepting the more or less accidental 

 descriptions performed by A. Kau-Burgav. Wolff very energeti- 

 cally undertook the investigation and description of the abnor- 

 malities in the Academy's collection, connecting to them the 

 material personally collected by him. However, because he was 

 involved with vast anatomical investigations, he published only 

 some of his observations e A great part of them were to have 

 been included in the great work which was left unfinished due 

 to his unexpected death, and which consequently did not appear. 

 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the teratological 

 collections were put in the reliable hands of Academician 

 P. A. Zagorsky, organized, and again studied intensively. 

 Zagorsky had time to investigate and describe only a small 

 number of interesting teratological cases. 



Eventually Baer settled in Petersburg. Despite his varied 

 activities connected with investigations in different spheres, 

 and with administrative, educational, and experimental work, 

 he found time for teratological investigations. At this time 

 he was not a beginner in this sphere. He was still a professor 

 in Konigsberg when he published some small articles, from which 

 information about deformed swine embryos has been mentioned. 



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