THE LIFE OF THE AUTHOR.

...so that he might remain in favor, he combed through his entire world, which was most abundant, organized it, and wrote a most accurate index of everything. In this most tedious labor, he bore an incredible burden, and made a loss of time that was too great, as he often bitterly lamented. In the following year, [1671], he was already laboring over treatises on the Chameleon and on the Mayfly original: "Hemerobio"; since he had already completed the whole matter. However, he delayed publication until the year [1675], the beginnings of which he had once initiated in France in the year [1667], and even long ago in Culemborg.

In the year [1672], on the first of May, he gave and dedicated to the College of Wise Men in Britain the Royal Society three plates, with six figures, in which he depicted the female uterus. He added an exquisite delineation of the spermatic vessels, the tubes of the uterus, and the ovaries. These had indeed been sketched out after a fashion on the 21st of January, in the year 1667, in the house of Professor van Horne, but they were only completed, together with a suitable explanation, on the 7th of May, in the year 1671. Thus, there appeared on the stage for the first time an example of the Art by which arteries, veins, and their branches, filled with a waxy material, could not only be seen but also preserved incorrupt for ages. Indeed, so that the reliability of his plates might be established, he also sent that very uterus, prepared with this new art, to the aforementioned Royal Society. He was moved to do this so that these just men, who were most experienced in these sacred matters, might pass judgment on the work itself. He also endeavored to prove through these things that those items which the Most Distinguished van Horne had published in his Prodromus preliminary work concerning the spermatic vessels were, in fact, primarily discovered by himself. However, the most urgent reason of all was to refute those things which Regnerus de Graaf had written most bitterly against him concerning the glory of the discoveries surrounding the genitalia; for which reason he also asked the Wise Men of the British College, as judges and arbiters in this matter, to be appointed with full power to decide upon this dispute.

At almost the same time, he observed many other most useful things in Anatomy. He dissected various fish in particular, so that he might especially know their liver, pancreas, and spleen. He found the pancreas to be very large in them most frequently, and the pancreatic ducts to be quite significant, usually several in number, and very open into the intestines. He now examined the pancreatic fluid anxiously and with purpose, in every way. He found that nothing acidic was ever present in it. He sent entire vials of the collected liquid to the Most Celebrated Man, Carolus Drelincourt, Professor of Medicine and Anatomy at the University of Leiden: all these things can be seen in the second part of the Private College of Amsterdam original: "collegii privati Amstelaedamensium", published by C. Commelin in the year 1673. For that entire booklet is almost uniquely owed to Swammerdam. In the same place, however, he gently and modestly refutes the Graafian and Sylvian opinions concerning the pancreatic juice. Indeed, before this time...