Rocky Road: Jan Swammerdam

Jan Swammerdam

From Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary

From "Reading and Writing The Book of Nature: Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680)" by Matthew Cobb

In 1668, when Cosimo de Medici visited Jan Swammerdam's curiosity cabinet, the savant dissected a caterpillar for his illustrious guest. To the young Medici's amazement, Swammerdam demonstrated that the caterpillar's body already contained the beginnings of wings of the butterfly it was destined to become.

Swammerdam was one of the 17th century's best at dissecting insects under the microscope. His skill enabled him to understand insect development as no one before him had. He realized that the individual insect persists throughout different stages, like the butterfly. He also understood that other types of bugs hatch from the egg in the adult form, and yet others start out as nymphs. He established different "orders" of development.

Swammerdam also noticed differences between males and females of the same species. Although modern biology has identified some female moth species lacking wings, few modern entomologists would cite the same reason as Swammerdam:

. . . so that the male can enjoy the sweet refreshments which the free air affords, and ramble at pleasure over the smiling fields and fragrant flowers, when, on the other hand, the care at home, and management of the fruits of wedlock are committed to the female only.

His enthusiasm for bugs was a great service to science, but not to Swammerdam's father. Although well-respected for his own curiosity cabinet, the elder Swammerdam didn't want his son to be inspired by curiosities so much as get a job, and maybe a home of his own. Financial worries and disputes with his family characterized the younger Swammerdam's life. Maybe familial frustrations contributed to a title he chose for a paper he wrote on the mayfly: A Figure of Man's Miserable Life. In marked contrast to his family life, his contributions to science and medicine were stellar, yet he was a man in a constant state of conflict. Swammerdam saw God's glory in much of what he studied, yet he agonized over whether, in studying creation, he was giving insufficient attention to the creator.

Swammerdam pioneered the practice of preserving biological specimens — both in spirits and with injected wax — for later study and display. (His contemporary, Frederik Ruysch, enhanced wax-injection techniques to create some mighty bizarre human anatomy specimens for display.) Swammerdam made key discoveries about human physiology, including discoveries about muscle contraction and respiration. Perhaps most significant of all, he rejected the notion of spontaneous generation. On the other hand, he founded another notion ultimately proven wrong: preformationism, or the idea that an individual organism contains all of its subsequent generations. Considering debates about the nature of reproduction and generation continued long after Swammerdam's death, his mistake is understandable.

A year after dissecting the caterpillar for his Medici visitor, Swammerdam published Historia Insectorum Generalis, his masterwork on insects. He spent most of the rest of his life working on an expanded publication, The Bible of Nature, later titled The Book of Nature. He completed the manuscript shortly before his death, and entrusted it to a friend for publication. The manuscript suffered a series of misadventures, including a lawsuit, multiple owners, and significant rewriting. The second volume of the work was finally published 60 years after it was written.

For more information:
"Reading and Writing The Book of Nature: Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680)" by Matthew Cobb in Endeavour Magazine, September 2000 issue
Chrysalis by Kim Todd
Matters of Exchange by Harold J. Cook
Merchants and Marvels edited by Smith and Findlen
Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary
Ingenious Pursuits by Lisa Jardine
The Seashell on the Mountaintop by Alan Cutler
Seen|Unseen by Martin Kemp