pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

This is the last work published in his lifetime by Marci of
Kronland, the most important Bohemian natural philosopher of
the scientiWc revolution, variously dubbed ‘the Bohemian Plato’,
‘the Bohemian Galileo’, and the ‘Hippocrates of Prague’. It sums
up his life’s work, in embryology, the philosophy of medi cine,
optics and mechanics. Marci ‘then at the height of his career
and – at 67 – having achieved European renown... reviewed in a
cross section through all parts of Natural Philosophy the current
opinions of his time against the background of ancient wisdom’
(Pagel 1967, p. 318). As well as the extensive sections on physics
and cosmology, Pagel has shown that the book is important for
Marci’s report of his meeting with Harvey (which Pagel was the
Wrst to notice) and his critique of Harvey’s theory of generation,
and discussion of his own theory, in several important points of
which Marci was Harvey’s unacknowledged precursor.
Harvey and Marci met when Harvey stayed in Prague in
1636, as physician to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, in
the diplomatic mission sent by Charles I to negotiate with
the Emperor Ferdinand III. Marci was familiar with Harvey’s
discovery of the circulation for which he expresses great
admiration. Pagel writes that ‘Marci deserves a place in the Wrst
rank of the advocates of Epigenesis between Aristotle and Harvey
(Pagel 1967, p. 317). Marci’s most important, and well justiWed
criticism of Harvey, where the present work presents an advance
on Harvey’s thinking, was his rejection of Harvey’s state ment that
there was no actual union of semen and ovum, Harvey believing
in an ill deWned vital principle.
Pagel’s close study of Marci’s career and works, in particular in his relations
with Harvey, are hard to reconcile with Lubos Nový’s statement in DSB that
Marci was intellectually isolated from his contemporaries. On the contrary,
he was well informed, and at the end of his life both the Jesuits and the Royal
Society tried to recruit him as one of Europe’s leading natural philosophers
(Smolka p. 226; Pagel 1967 pp. 289–90: Nový, in 1970, was evidently unaware
of Pagel’s work).
Walter Pagel and P. Rattansi, ‘Harvey meets the “Hippocrates of Prague” (Johannes
Marcus Marci of Kronland)’, Medical History 8 (1964) 78–84; Walter Pagel,
William Harvey’s Biological Ideas (New York, 1967), pp. 286–323; Josef Smolka,
‘The ScientiWc Revolution in Bohemia’, in Roy Porter, ed. The ScientiWc Revolution
in National Context (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 210–239.
115
LAMARCK, Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de (1744–1829)
Recherches sur l’organisation des corps vivants: et
particulièrement sur son origine... précédé du discours d’ouverture
du cours de zoologie donné dans le Muséum National d’Histoire
Naturelle, l’an X de la République.
Paris: chez l’auteur... [et] Maillard [no date in imprint], 1802.