Medical Investigation
in Seventeenth Century
England

Embryological Thought in
Seventeenth Century England

by Charles W. Bodemer

Robert Boyle as an Amateur Physician

by Lester S. King

Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar,
October 14, 1967

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California, Los Angeles/1968

Foreword

Although the collection of scientific literature in the Clark Library has already served as the background for a number of seminars, in the most recent of them the literature of embryology and the medical aspects of Robert Boyle's thought were subjected to a first and expert examination. Charles W. Bodemer, of the Division of Biomedical History, School of Medicine, University of Washington, evaluated the embryological ideas of that remarkable group of inquiring Englishmen, Sir Kenelm Digby, Nathaniel Highmore, William Harvey, and Sir Thomas Browne. Lester S. King, Senior Editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, dealt with the medical side of Robert Boyle's writings, the collection of which constitutes one of the chief glories of the Clark Library. It was a happy marriage of subject matter and library's wealth, the former a noteworthy oral presentation, the latter a spectacular exhibit. As usual, and of necessity, the audience was restricted in size, far smaller in numbers than all those who are now able to enjoy the presentations in their present, printed form.

C. D. O'Malley

Professor of Medical History, UCLA

I

Embryological Thought in Seventeenth
Century England

CHARLES W. BODEMER

To discuss embryological thought in seventeenth-century England is to discuss the main currents in embryological thought at a time when those currents were both numerous and shifting. Like every other period, the seventeenth century was one of transition. It was an era of explosive growth in scientific ideas and techniques, suffused with a creative urge engendered by new philosophical insights and the excitement of discovery. During the seventeenth century, the ideas relating to the generation and development of organisms were quite diverse, and there were seldom criteria other than enthusiasm or philosophical predilection to distinguish the fanciful from the feasible. Applying a well-known phrase from another time to seventeenth-century embryological theory, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness."[1]

Embryology underwent some very significant changes during the seventeenth century. At the beginning of the century, embryology was descriptive and clearly directed toward morphological goals; by the end of the century, a dynamic, more physiological attitude was apparent, and theories of development derived from an entirely different philosophic base. During this time, English investigators contributed much, some of ephemeral, some of lasting importance to the development of embryology. For this discussion, we will divide the seventeenth century into three overlapping, but generally distinct, periods; and, without pretence of presenting an exhaustive exposition, we will concentrate upon the concepts and directions of change characteristic of each period, with primary reference to those individuals who best reveal the character of seventeenth-century English embryology.

An understanding of the characteristics of embryological thought at the beginning of the seventeenth century may enhance appreciation of later developments. During the latter part of the sixteenth century, the study of embryology was, for obvious reasons, most often considered within the province of anatomy and obstetrics. From Bergengario da Capri to Jean Riolan the Younger, study of the fetus was recommended as an adjunct of these subjects, and it required investigation by direct observation, as decreed by the "restorers" of anatomy. Embryonic development was, however, also studied independently of other disciplines by a smaller group of individuals, and the study of chick development by Aldrovandus, Coiter, and Fabricius ab Aquapendente laid the basic groundwork of descriptive embryology. In either case, during the last half of the sixteenth century the attempt of the embryologist to break with the traditions of the past was overt, although consistently unsuccessful. When dealing with the fetus, the investigators of this period were, almost to a man, Galenists influenced to varying degrees by Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Avicenna. Each felt compelled to challenge the immediate authority, and yet their intellectual isolation from the past was incomplete, and their views on embryogeny corresponded with more often than they differed from those of the person they railed against.

Embryology emerged as a distinct scientific discipline during the last half of the sixteenth century and early years of the seventeenth century as a result of the aforementioned investigations of Aldrovandus, Coiter, and Fabricius. Concerned with description and depiction of the anatomy of the embryo, they established a period of macro-iconography in embryology. The macro-iconographic era was empirical and based upon first-hand observation; it was concerned more with the facts than with the theories of development. This empiricism existed in competition with a declining, richly vitalistic Aristotelian rationalism which had virtually eliminated empiricism during the scholastic period. However, the decline of this vitalistic rationalism coincided with the rise of a mechanistic rationalism which had its roots in ancient Greek atomistic theories of matter. The empiricism comprising the leitmotif of the macro-iconographic movement then became blended with, or, more often, submerged within, the new variety of rationalism; hence, mechanistic rationalism, divorced entirely or virtually from empiricism, characterizes embryology during the first half of the seventeenth century. It is a particularly vigorous strain of seventeenth-century English embryological thought, well illustrated in the writings of that English man of affairs, Sir Kenelm Digby.

Digby, whose name, according to one biographer, "is almost synonymous with genius and eccentricity,"[2] could claim our attention not only as a scientist of talent, but also as a statesman, soldier, pirate, lover, and a Roman Catholic possessed of sufficient piety and naked courage to attempt the conversion of Oliver Cromwell. Like his father, who was hanged for participation in the Gunpowder Plot, Digby was a political creature, and during the Civil War he was imprisoned for several years. When freed, Digby left England to settle in France. Spending much time at the court of the Queen Dowager, who had been instrumental in securing his release, and exposed to the vigorous intellectual currents of Paris and Montpellier, Digby labored upon a treatise of greater scientific substance and merit than his more famous work on "the powder of sympathy." Published in 1644