The Mind Creative
Of course, the real goal of the anatomist was not to amaze his
audience, even though that ambition, too, could be justified,
particularly by arguing that it would impress the viewer with the
wondrousness of God’s creation. But the ultimate objective of
anatomy was to increase man’s knowledge of the structure and
workings of the human body. Ruysch had developed his skills to
be able to make structures visible which would otherwise have
remained invisible.
Towards the end of the 17th
century, after thirty years of
practice, Ruysch, assisted by his
son, managed to perfect his
preparation method, which, as
he said, now made ‘the tiniest
parts of the human body clear to
the eye’. Key to the process was
the injection of a substance that
would not congeal until it had
penetrated the tiniest of blood
vessels. Liquid wax went a fair
way towards this objective, but
not as far as Ruysch wanted. So
he had constantly been looking
for a better substitute. Once he
had that, he made many new
anatomical discoveries, and he
could make preparations that differed little in appearance from
living tissue. Most of them now were stored in glass jars and
bottles; in a remarkably clear liquid he called liquor balsamaceous,
a liquid that preserved their lifelike colour and elasticity. Whereas
they used to become hard and stiff, and lost their colour, now they
were kept bright and supple.
When Ruysch first made his results public, his technique was
considered akin to sorcery. Some people simply refused to believe
their eyes. Ruysch was accused of using trickery to make his
preparations more attractive. He was often criticized for the way
he presented his anatomical material. His reasons were clear:
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