1884.] Half-Hours with the Old Naturalists. 201 
In 1667 he graduated at Leyden as DoCtor of Medicine, after 
maintaining an inaugural thesis on respiration. 
In the same year, however, he was attacked by a violent 
quartan ague, which left him permanently enfeebled. Partly 
in consequence of this calamity he abandoned his re- 
searches in Human Anatomy, and gave himself entirely up 
to Entomology. 
In the following year the reigning Grand Duke of 
Tuscany, an enlightened prince, paid a visit to Holland. 
Here he went to visit the Swammerdam museum, and made 
the acquaintance of our hero. The Duke was so favourably 
impressed with what he saw and heard that he offered to 
purchase the collection of the younger Swammerdam — as 
distinct from the museum of the father — for a large sum, 
and to give him a permanent appointment at his Court if he 
would remove to Florence. Unfortunately for himself and 
for Science Swammerdam declined this offer, having, as he 
then thought, too great a love for independence. I say 
“ unfortunately for Science,” because had he accepted the 
Grand Duke’s proposals his museum, instead of being 
broken up at his death and lost, would have been kept to- 
gether. He would also have had full opportunity to devote 
the remainder of his life to researches on a different fauna. 
I must now mention an incident of some importance in the 
history of Science. Either during this visit of the Grand 
Duke to Holland, in 1668, or during an alleged visit of 
Swammerdam to Florence, in 1678, he showed that Sove- 
reign and his Court that when a portion of a muscle of a 
frog’s leg, hanging by a thread of nerve bound with a silver 
wire, was held over a copper support so that both nerve and 
wire touched the copper, the muscle immediately contracted. 
This is nothing less than an anticipation by a century of 
the famous initial experiment of Galvani ! 
Swammerdam’s experiment, however, led to nothing. 
The phenomenon produced was too remote from the ordi- 
nary sphere of his studies, his time and energies were fully 
preoccupied, and there was no Volta to interpret the faCt. 
Otherwise we might have been in these days speaking of 
Swammerdamic batteries, Swammerdamometers, and the 
Swammerdamic current — cumbrous words, it must be con- 
fessed. 
About this time Swammerdam denied the reputed acidity 
of the pancreatic secretion, and was engaged in conse- 
quence in a fresh controversy with Rynier de Graaf, and 
with his old master Sylvius de la Boe, whom he finally 
refuted in 1672. 
VOL. VI. (third series) p 
