Wrote Letter L-018 of 1674年12月04日 to Henry Oldenburg about optic nerves and sight; enclosed specimen of cow's optic nerve

Date:
December 4, 1674
Standard reference information
L-number:
L-018
Leeuwenhoek's number:
8
Collected Letters number:
13
Collected Letters volume:
1

Text of the letter in the original Dutch and in English translation from Alle de Brieven. The Collected Letters at the DBNL - De Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

The original manuscript on five folio pages, written and signed by Leeuwenhoek, is preserved at the Royal Society (MS. 1837. Early Letters L1.9).

An excerpt was published in Philosophical Transactions, vol. 10, no. 117, dated 26 September 1675. See Publication history below.

Leeuwenhoek wrote this letter to Henry Oldenburg about:

Colour of the iris of the eye. Anatomy of the optic nerve. Explanation of the conduction of the sensations of sight. Method of examining the cerebral substance. Comments about English criticisms of his observations of the brain. A full-page figure of the transverse section of an optic nerve of a cow was attached to the letter. A specimen of the optic nerve was attached to the letter in an original packet.

Reception in London

This letter is not mentioned in Birch's History of the Royal Society of London.

Specimens and methods

The section of a cow's optic nerve that Leeuwenhoek sent to London is still in the possession of the Royal Society. It was photographed by Wim van Egmond in 2020 through an original Leeuwenhoek microscope.

(click to enlarge)

Response to other researchers

At the end of this letter, Leeuwenhoek addressed the Society's criticisms of his observations about the brain.

I shall be obliged to you for sending me the objections raised to my observations, that I may forward my further observations to your address. But please to remember who I am and to take my opinions for what they are worth. I have always intended to stand by my speculations and my considerations till I should be better instructed or more experienced and then to abandon my previous opinions and to accept my latest views and put them down in writing.

Figures

Figures

1 in red chalk - cross-section of cow's optic nerve

A, B, C, D is the circumference of the Optie Nerve, which did not dry round-ways, but somewhat oblong on the side C, D.

E, and all the places that are left white and lucid, are cavities in the dried Nerve, and which I imagine to have been filaments, and out of which, for the greatest part, the soft globuls have been exhaled.

F, are particles or globuls, which are in the little holes of the filaments in many places, and such as have not been exhaled: Of which some do lie on the side of the hollownesses, others lie round about a cavity, others lie cross a cavity, as G. All these particles were eminently transparent.

About A, B, C, D, there are near the edge of the Nerve some transparent winding stroaks.

(click to enlarge)

Publication history
Related sources, especially Philosophical Transactions, and first editions only of Leeuwenhoek's volumes of letters. For later editions see Related events under Learn more.
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