Science in Culture About How to Present Complex Concepts and What Metaphors Will Be Effective

book reviews

Indeed, he has clearly thought long and hard Science in culture about how to present complex concepts and what metaphors will be effective. Concepts Babes in bottles of “the circus”, “loops within loops”, “multi- The anatomical art of Frederik Ruysch plex” forms of apparatus and driver M. KEMP Martin Kemp “demons” enliven the arguments. He weaves his story in an engrossing theatrical context, he sight of pickled babies and their severed centring on the conservative forces of “Lady Tparts, floating in jars of balsamic liquor, Evolution” that led to the cellular subunits adorned with lace cuffs, elaborate hats and comprising today’s organisms, and beyond festoons of beads, is bound to make the modern to cell subordination and differentiation. spectator feel uneasy. Yet seventeenth-century There seems little doubt that Loewen- visitors to the “cabinet” of Frederik Ruysch in stein sees this book as an opportunity to Amsterdam appear to have expressed no disgust. broadcast his contribution to the field of The science and aesthetics of anatomical cell-to-cell communication and the control preparations were clearly very different from of cell growth. Channels — his consuming those in a modern anatomical museum. passion — are paid particular attention. His Dr Ruysch was Praelector Chirugiae et bias towards the importance of his own labo- Anatomiae for the City of Amsterdam over a ratory’s work, and his tendency to ignore remarkable span of time, from 1667 until his Ruysch’s “Head of Infant with Dissected that of other, particularly non-American, death in 1731, as well as serving as the supervisor Cranium and Glass Eyes”, from the labs is striking. The blurb even claims that of its botanical garden. He was the subject in Kunstkammer of Peter the Great in the Loewenstein is the “man who ... opened the 1670 and 1683 of two paintings in the famous Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography field of cell–cell communication”. series of Dutch “anatomy lessons”, of which in St Petersburg. Loewenstein plumbs the known depths Rembrandt’s recently restored “Anatomy of Dr. of cellular and molecular biology with verve, Nicolaes Tulp” is the most celebrated. An whole or parts of babies, whose small corpses always attempting to set the facts in the con- acclaimed teacher and popular public dissector, were available to him through his obstetric text of how the processes might have evolved Ruysch gained international fame for anatomical activities and were readily susceptible to and why they need to be so sophisticated and preparations made by his secret techniques of injection. Ruysch did not concentrate on the complex. In all this he succeeds in gripping injection, in the form of isolated systems such as kind of monstrous deformities that attracted fashion, yet the demands he makes of his blood vessels and of whole corpses prior to popular curiosity, but focused instead on readers may well deter all but the highly dissection. preparations that aspired to evoke the beauty of knowledgeable or utterly determined. One witness to Ruysch’s collection delighted “innocents”, dead before their time. In the Nancy Lane is in the Department of Zoology, in “groves of plants and designs of shell-work Kunstkammer, we see amputated limbs University of Cambridge, Downing Street, with skeletons, and dismember’d limbs ... with emerging from lace cuffs, tenderly supporting a Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK. apposite inscriptions from the Latin poets”. His dissected heart, an intact placenta. An eye grand house in Amsterdam became a tourist dangles from tiny fingers on a fine thread in an attraction, visited by “generals of armies, example remaining in Leiden. In the above ambassadors, electors, and even princes and example from St Petersburg, now housed and kings”. One such monarch, Tsar Peter the Great bottled far more plainly than in its original New Journals of Russia, was so impressed that he purchased the context, an infant’s head, horizontally sectioned This year, Nature’s annual new journals whole ensemble in 1717 for the princely sum of to reveal the open cranium, conceals its severed review supplement will appear in the issue 30,000 guilders and installed it in his new city of neck behind a fine scarf of lace, while its glass of 2 September. Publishers and learned St Petersburg, where many specimens still eyes regard the enquiring viewer with an eerie societies are invited to submit journals for survive in the Kunstkammer of the National similitude of consciousness. review, as well as details of any eligible elec- Academy of Sciences. Having experienced fleeting lives, at best, tronic journals, taking note of the following One lost exhibit, illustrated in a folding plate Ruysch’s infant subjects have been accorded a criteria: in Ruysch’s Thesaurus Anatomicus of 1717, took kind of immortality, cheating rigor mortis and G Journals must have first appeared during the form of a small mountain scattered with gall, even long-term decomposition. At least, this is or after June 1997 and issued at least four kidney and bladder stones on which flourishes a how they were seen at the time. As a poem separate numbers by the end of May 1999. forest of injected vessels. The elaborate tableau is printed in Ruysch’s Thesaurus said, “Through thy G Journals covering any aspect of science completed with three grieving infants’ skeletons, art, O Ruysch, a dead infant lives and teaches are eligible, although those dealing with clin- creating a miniature ‘theatre’ on the theme of the and, though speechless, still speaks. Even death ical medicine and pure mathematics are transience of life. The “trees” of vessels and itself is afraid.” excluded, as are newsletters and publica- bodily rocks stress the microcosmic conception Martin Kemp is in the Department of the History tions of abstracts. of the human body as a “lesser world”. of Art, University of Oxford, 35 Beaumont Street, G Frequency of publication must be at least Many of the preparations displayed the Oxford OX1 2PG, UK. three times a year. G The main language is English. sible mechanisms for the cellular basis of ular biology, while those who are will already G Deadline for submission is 5 June. cancer, theories of neuronal communication know it well. For whom, then, is the tale told? and, especially, the thorny issue of the basis This book is not for lay-readers, so perhaps it Please send at least four different issues of human consciousness are all dealt with in is for those with a background in the biomol- (the first, the most recent and any two some detail, albeit, unsurprisingly, incon- ecular sciences who want to be brought up others) of each eligible title, together with full clusively. to date, or those who want to brood on our details of subscription rates, to: Isobel Flan- Alas, the story’s complicated grandeur origins. agan, Nature, Porters South, Crinan Street, will probably be incomprehensible to any- Loewenstein’s extensive musings and London N1 9XW, UK. Tel: +44 (0)171 843 4542. one not familiar with biophysics and molec- explanations are generally far from tedious. e-mail: [email protected]