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Home , Georg Dionysius Ehret, Herman Boerhaave, Hortus Cliffortianus, Johannes Burman

Chapter One

A Botanist

The Jacquin Family

The Jacquins can be traced back to a middle- under (1668–1738), had dif- class Roman-Catholic family of merchants ficulties progressing as a professor in Holland. from Vertus en Champagne, France, where After seven years of tenure at Leiden Univer- Guy Jacquin and Jacqueline Curiot had two sity, he moved to Vienna, at the invitation of sons, Claude and Nicolas, baptized at the Ég- Maria Theresa of Austria, to become her per- lise Saint-Martin de Vertus in 1646 and 1657, sonal physician and reform medical education respectively. The elder brother established a and practice in Austria.2 After receiving pri- drapery, camelot and shag factory in nearby vate elementary education at the Latin School Margny-lès-Compiègne, and moved to Paris in Leiden, Nicolas, like his father, went to sec- at the turn of the century. Nicolas was main- ondary school in Antwerp, where he studied ly in charge of trading the products with the Greek and Roman literature together with Van Dutch, and moved to Leiden after 1679, where Swieten’s son Gottfried (1733–1803), graduat- he married and had a son Claude Nicolas, who ing with excellent evaluations in 1744, at the after receiving a solid education in Roman and age of seventeen. Jacquin’s father had died one Greek literature in Antwerp at the Jesuit Gym- year before, after losing most of his fortune be- nasium, continued the family business and cause of bad business with a Portuguese trad- became a successful cloth merchant and man- ing firm3. Nicolas began studies in ufacturer of velvet. In Leiden, Claude Nicolas at the University of Leuven in 1745; however, married Elisabeth Marie van Heyningen, sole possibly because of his mother’s incapacity to descendant of a wealthy aristocratic Dutch sustain him in Leuven and her wish to contin- family. They had three children, one of whom, ue the family business, and also because of his born on 16 February 1727, was named Nicolas dislike of a Scholastic education, he returned Joseph Jacquin.1 to Leiden. He then began to study at the University, where he attended Pieter van Education Musschenbroek’s (1692–1761) lectures in phys- ics at the time of his invention of the ‘Leiden The Netherlands were not a place for a Roman- Jar’, studied surgery with Bernhard Siegfried Catholic family to thrive in the eighteenth Albinus (1697–1770), author of one of the most century. The Jacquin family doctor and friend, important anatomical treatises of the time, (1700–1772), having studied and took chemistry classes from Hieronymus medicine and pharmacy in Leuven and Leiden David Gaubius (1705–1780). By that time, was famous throughout Europe particularly for its school of 1 See Genealogy below. Here I deliberately use the French spelling Nicolas. Jacquin was probably bap- medicine and related natural sciences. tized with the same name of his forebears. Later in his life, already in Austria, his books in Latin are authored Nicolai[o], while in his publications in German as of 2 Stafleu 1971b, Kidd & Modlin 2001. 1783 he appears as Nikolaus as he is now commonly re- 3 The Portuguese firm is first mentioned by Riedl ferred to. (1973) without reference. NIKOLAUS JOSEPH JACQUIN’S AMERICAN PLANTS was by then amongst the more important dis- excursions and without doubt had a good ciplines at the medical school, thanks to the knowledge of tropical plants, both living and efforts of Herman Boerhaave, renowned physi- preserved in the . It was during the cian, chemist and botanist, director of the Hor- first lecture in medicinal botany by Van Royen, tus Botanicus, and his successor Adriaan van that at the sight of Costus speciosus Jacquin fell Royen (1704–1779). These two scholars, togeth- in love with plants and decided to dedicate his er with Jan Friedrich Gronovius (1611–1671), life to botany.5 (1707–1780), and George In 1750 Jacquin moved to Rouen, where Clifford (1685–1760) had made Leiden an im- he studied with Claude-Nicolas Le Cat (1700– portant center for botany, where Carl Nilsson 1768; the French surgeon and urologist who Linnaeus (1707–1778) spent his early years be- in 1725 testified for a case of spontaneous hu- tween 1735 and 1738. The Hortus Botanicus and man combustion), and proceeded to Paris, the (George Clifford’s pri- where he attended lectures by Antoine de vate garden at Hartecamp in Heemstede) were Jussieu (1686-1758) at the Jardin du Roi, and home to a large collection of local and foreign participated in botanical excursions with An- plants, including many tropical ones, which toine’s brother Bernard (1699-1777). While in had previously amazed Linnaeus.4 Paris, fearing he would not be able to secure Jacquin was particularly fond of the bo- the funds for the examinations for his degree, tanical lectures given by Van Royen, which he called upon his friend Van Swieten, now a he attended with his close friend Laurens prominent figure in Vienna. Van Swieten im- Theodorus Gronovius (1730–1777), three years mediately invited Jacquin to finish his medical younger, son of Jan Frederic. Van Royen’s lectures included the dissemination of Lin- 5 Much attention has been given by previous biog- raphers to this footnoted excerpt of the Biographie relat- naeus’s method, using the ing to the origin of Jacquin’s interest in botany, which (1735), with its beautiful illustration of the reads: Methodus Plantarum Sexualis published a year “Allein die harmonischen Gemüthsneigungen welche later by (1708–1770), zwi- schen ihm und Theodor Gronovius das unauflöslichste Band der Freundschaft knüpften, führten schon damals the and seine Wahl auf das damalige Lieblingsstudium dieses sei- (1737), and many other current sources of bo- nes akademischen Mitgenossen – die Pflanzenkunde*) tanical knowledge, most of them published welche der Grund seines nachmaligen Ruhmes werden, und der er bis zum Ziele seiner irdischen Laufbahne so in Leiden and Amsterdam. Jacquin was able treu als seinem Freunde bleiben sollte.” “Note: Aus dem to study in depth Linnaeus’s sexual system, Munde seines Sohnes des Hr Prof. Joseph Freyh. v. Jac- and its application in the Hortus Cliffortianus, quin ist es, daß ihn bei einer akademischen Vor- lesung, wo von Royen den damals offizinellen Costus arabicus/ Van Royen’s own Florae leydensis prodromus, Costus speciosus erklärte, der Anblick dieser Pfl schönen Gronovius’s Flora virginica (1745), and Mark Pflanze so sehr überraschte als ergötzte daß dieser Augen- Catesby’s (1683–1749) The Natural History of blick auch schon an sich für dessen unvertilgbare Liebe zur Pflan- zenkunde entschieden haben würde, wenn er Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands (1731– auch nicht durch Gronovius Neigung dazu bestimmt wor- 1743), which Clifford, Gronovius and Van Royen den wäre. F. H”. had in their personal libraries. Jacquin and I can easily see Jacquin in his early twenties, perhaps with his younger friend, attending their first lecture in the younger Gronovius performed botanical botany very early in the morning at the Gazophylacium Academicum of the Hortus Botanicus, and being mar- veled by this wonderful plant in flower. Van Royen most 4 Stearn 1962. By 1685 there were more than 3000 likely was adopting Linnaeus’s sexual system in his lec- plant species from around the world cultivated in the tures and thus had started with Class I ‘Monandria Mo- Hortus Botanicus. nogynia’.

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