A Doctor of Long Ago

...These names, almost needless to say, represent some of the highest biological achievement in the various countries of Europe in our generation...

...And so far from Professor Minot being alone in his high estimation of Spallanzani, all those who in recent years have been attracted to Spallanzani's work have felt that here indeed was a great pioneering mind with a power of arranging and appreciating the significance of experiments that has been equaled very rarely in the history of science...

...That eighteenth century holds many surprising things besides, distinguished priest-scientists, and not the least of them was the opportunity for women in Italy to secure education of the highest order, even in science...

...The details of his career, which have been brought out very clearly, are interesting mainly because they represent such a distinct contradiction of a great many rather common impressions with regard to the history of science...

...The latest of Spallanzani's admirers, Professor A. Elizabeth Adams, of the Biology Department of Mount Holyoke College, writing in the December number of the Scientific Monthly, one of the official organs of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, began her article on the Italian priest-scientist with this sentence: Although Spallanzani worked nearly two hundred years ago-his birth occurred on January 12, 1729-his findings are still quoted, his methods commended and especially in experimental science both the variety and nicety of his experiments and the accuracy of his observations sanction his right to be considered one of the founders of experimental biology...

...He introduced the practice of dissection into England but gave up his medical affiliations to become a priest toward the end of his life...

...Petersburg in Russia and Parma in Italy...

...Spallanzani is, for instance, a typical example of those students of the Jesuits, of whom there were literally dozens during the eighteenth century, who, after preliminary solid training in the classics, took up the study of mathematics and physical science and reached high distinction...

...Among his contemporaries was Copernicus, the canon of a cathedral, probably a priest, surely in orders...

...As Professor Morgan says: It seems highly probable that the regenerative process is one of the fundamental attributes of living things and that we can find no explanation of it as the outcome of the selective agency of the environment...

...Morgan in the conclusion of his own volume, Regeneration-that is, the re-growth of portions of the bodies of animals after their amputation-has insisted that this is such a significant subject in biology, and so evades all possible explanation by any process of natural selection, that it constitutes the crucial test of Darwinism...

...Father Kircher, S. J., the first to see microbes...

...It is not often that the reputation of a scientist scarcely more than forty has spread so widely as to bring him calls from such distant centres of learning...

...There is, for instance, Linacre who, after having been royal physician to King Henry VIII, was the founder of the Royal College of Physicians in England that regulated quackery...

...This would seem a very unsuitable beginning for a career like his, but within a few years his leaning toward scientific subjects and experimentation manifested itself and he was offered the professorship of physics-then called natural history-at Modena...

...Bishop Stensen, the Dane, the father of geology as proclaimed by the international council of geologists when they unveiled a tablet to him forty years ago...

...partly for an increase of salary, which he proceeded to devote to the enrichment of his museum, partly for securing permission and funds for travels in Turkey...

...Father Gordon, a Benedictine of Nuremburg, inventor of the frictional electrical machine, and Abbe Beccariax, who was made a member of the English Royal Society before he was thirty and whose works were published by that Society...

...He did not accept, but he used the invitation as a lever on the university authorities of Pavia (How old the new is in such university affairs...

...This is not idle praise dictated by reverence for his clerical position but the confirmed opinion of modern scientists who know exactly the work that he did...

...Colonel Garrison of the Surgeon-General's Library at Washington, in his History of Medicine, which is considered so authoritative, is very emphatic in his appreciation of Father Spallanzani's observations and experimental work...

...He was now known as one of the most brilliant experimental scientists of the time...

...Professor Adams has emphasized particularly the grasp of details and the thoughtful planning of experiments which Spallanzani's work on regeneration reveals...

...After Modena he accepted the chair of natural history at the University of Pavia...

...In this bicentenary memorialization, Father Spallanzani may well serve as a reminder of literally hundreds of priest colleagues who devoted themselves to the development of physical and biological science...

...His sister was his most faithful and most reliable assistant, and many of his most successful experiments and observations are said to have been due to her patience and her technical skill in the laboratory...

...There he was received very honorably by the sultan, who helped him materially in his investigation of various scientific questions in his domain and enabled him to carry back with him many valuable specimens...

...So far from his clerical character and ecclesiastical position hampering his scientific development, it was just as he had begun his scientific career with an eclat that brought an invitation to professorships at various universities that he was ordained priest and thus secured the leisure and the opportunity to devote himself, without thought for his future, to his scientific experiments...

...That he was thoroughly appreciated in Italy during the second half of the eighteenth century will be very well recognized from the fact that he received invitations to professors' chairs at many of the Italian universities...

...Father Diwisch, the Premonstratensian, who shared with Franklin the honor of demonstrating that lightning and electricity are identical...

...Our own distinguished Professor Minot of Harvard declared in his essay, The Method of Science, that "Spallanzani established the modern standard...

...This is not surprising when we recall that Spallanzani's own strongest incentive to original scientific research is said to have come from intimate contact with that distinguished woman professor of natural history at the University of Bologna, his cousin, Laura Bassi...

...Then there was Father Clavius, S. J., who corrected the calendar...

...A DOCTOR OF LONG AGO By JAMES J. WALSH THE year just closed was the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Lazzaro Spallanzani who, as a priest-professor in the Italian universities of the second half of the eighteenth century, did more than anyone else to bring in the modern era of observation and experiment in biology...

...Spallanzani is just one of a series of priests who in the past four centuries have been distinguished leaders in science...

...Canon Kleist of Kammin in Pomerania, inventor of the Leyden jar...

...At the age of twenty-five he was appointed professor of logic and metaphysics at the college of Reggio...

...Many scientists in our time are inclined to think of Abbot Mendel as representing a distinct exception in his combination of priest and scientist but besides Spallanzani who preceded Mendel by less than a hundred years, many others might be mentioned...

...He had been some six years at Pavia when he received an invitation to the University of Padua, which had been for 300 years of high prestige in scientific achievement...

...Very few had anything like Spallanzani's success, but genius is rare and even great talent does not occur often enough to give us many successful pioneers in science...

...This is indeed high praise, and yet it is not difficult to parallel it with expressions of similar appreciation from other authorities who possess a very definite right to an opinion on the subject...

...Colonel Garrison does not hesitate to declare that Spallanzani's work continues to be significant even down to our time...

...Professor Thomas Hunt Morgan of Columbia University, our recognized authority in this field, ranges together the names of Trembley/ Reaumur, Bonnet and Spallanzani, emphasizing particularly the original researches of the Italian...

...His actual words are: These experiments were not taken up again until the end of the nineteenth century, but they contain all the essentials of the modern work of Roux, Driesch, Morgan, Loeb and others...

...There he devoted himself to the collection of specimens of various kinds illustrating the natural sciences and founded Pavia's Natural History Museum, which very soon came to be looked upon as one of the most interesting in Europe...

...His fame extended throughout Europe, and so it is not surprising that he received calls to professorships from the University of Coimbra in Portugal, of St...

...He was particularly taken with the researches on regeneration which have come to us from this Italian priest, for they represent scientific investigation of the highest order...

...Spallanzani has been the subject of a number of articles in connection with his two hundredth anniversary...