Addresses and other papers / by William Williams Keen.

  • William Williams Keen
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Addresses and other papers / by William Williams Keen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    were made on the bodies of infants, but finally, when, in 1866, Admiral Berkeley was killed and his body captured in the memorable four days’ fight between the English and the Dutch fleets, Ruysch successfully embalmed his body by order of the States General, and sent it back to England with an almost natural appearance.* Such was his success,! says M. Fontenelle, that he seemed not to preserve men after death, but rather to prolong their life. At the close of his long career they remained perfectly preserved, with their original softness, flexibility, and color. In his museum, which was called the eighth wonder of the world, the dulce and the utile were elegantly combined. Flowers, ornamental shell-work, and rarities worthy a royal cabinet were interspersed with skeletons, injections, and other anatomical pieces (see Frontispiece), and many of them, especially the foetal skeletons, were labelled with appropriate and instructive mottos.{ Thus, one who did not attain to of the middle layer of the choroid, called the 11 Tunica Ruyschiana ” (though this was first accurately described by Zinn, in 1755), the finer vessels in the serous and synovial membranes, the pia and dura maters, the corpora cavernosa, and many parenchymata. Hyrtl, Zerglied., p. 594. Sprengel, Hist, de la Med., tome iv, pp. 144, 233, 277, 278. * Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. i, p. 528. Portal, Hist, de PAnat., tome iii, p. 262. So natural was one infant’s body that Peter the Great is said to have kissed it. f Hyrtl (Zerglied., p. 597) found the process described by J. Ch. Rieger (Introd. in notitiam rerum natural, et artefact., etc., Hagae, 1743, 4to, 2 vols.) under “ Animal” (vol. i) and “Balsamus” (vol. ii, pp. 54-57). The latter contains a copy of Ruysch’s autograph directions as to his mode of injection and preservation. The following are extracts: “ Pro materie ceracea sumendum sebum, et quidem tempore hyemali simplex—aestivo tempore exiguum frustum ceraz albce addendum. Liquefactae materiae additur cinnabaris factitiae quantitas sufficiens, aut quantum vis, idque movendo, donee bene permixta sit cinnabaris. Liquor meus est spiritus, e vino, vel frumento confectus, cui si addere velimus in destillatione manipu- lum piperis nigri, eo acrius penetrat per carnosa spartes.” X Bayle et Thillaye, op. cit., vol. i, p. 529. The plates in Ruysch’s Thesaurus Anatomicus, i-vi, Amstel., 1701, illustrate these quaint, but withal artistic, arrangements. See opposite plate.