Leeuwenhoek's Cabinet of Wonders

During Leeuwenhoek's time, the Dutch mania for collecting extended into the middle class, including craftsmen and shopkeepers like Leeuwenhoek. What they called cabinets of curiosities were very popular. We can assume that many of Leeuwenhoek's friends and neighbors had their own modest collections, fueled by the things brought back by the ships of the VOC, Dutch East India Company. Delft had one of the VOC's few regional offices. A VOC shipment was no doubt the source of the coconuts that Leeuwenhoek dissected.

The Dutch called the collected things rariteiten, rarities, strange things, curiosities. The image below right is Levinus Vincent's Wondertooneel der Nature (Wonder Theater of Nature), 1715.

Three years later, to describe his own microscopic collection on the title page of Send-Brieven, Leeuwenhoek used the word wonderlyk, wonderful, marvelous. His collection was harder to display than Vincent's. On the other hand, because it had to be drawn and printed, his collection, that is, the plates in Send-Brieven, could spread far beyond his home or the trays near his workbench.

Leeuwenhoek's Cabinet of Wonders has all of the 140 figures, originally copperplate etchings on 32 plates that accompanied half the of 46 letters of the Send-Brieven. The plates are better than those that appear early in his career in Philosophical Transactions, no doubt because he could afford better draughtsmen and because he supervised the printing himself.

They are organized here by specimens. The menu on the right and below will display the plate with a link to the letter that references it.

Grains and Meal

  • Shoot, grass blade, and root of barley
  • Grain of barley
  • Meal of wheat, rye, and barley
  • Meal of oat and bean
  • Meal of bean and green pea

Fruit Seeds

  • Seed and vessels of pear
  • Seeds of pear; vessels of trees
  • Seeds of apple and bean

Coconut

  • Nut of coconut
  • Nut and rind of coconut
  • Vessels and sheath of coconut
  • Wood of coconut tree

Pig Brains

  • Vessels and fibers of pig brain and coconut
  • Vessels and fibers of pig brain
  • Vessels of pig brain and apple

Tendons

  • Tendon of mouse
  • Tendon of mouse and honeybee
  • Tendon of ox and flea (upper right; click to enlarge)
  • Tendon of sheep and oyster

Sheep Reproduction

  • Testicle and sperm of ram
  • Uterus of sheep (lower right; click to enlarge)

Fish

  • Muscle of cod
  • Scale of carp

Animal Hair, Skin, and Flesh

  • Hair of mouse, bear, human, deer
  • Skin and fat on skin of human hand and nose
  • Flesh and blood vessels of honeybee, fly, and ant
  • Flesh of whale
  • Flesh of cow, hen, and mouse

Cows

  • Leg of gnat, fly, and bee; flesh of cow
  • Nerve of cow
  • Spinal cord of cow

Salts

  • Salts in root of vine

The titles and figure texts are mine, not Leeuwenhoek's, For the titles, I used the modern term but preserved his terminology in the text. Two example:

  • He used trekker, literally puller, for what we now call a tendon, pees in modern Dutch.
  • He used zaad-ballen, literally seed-balls where we now use testicles, testikel in modern Dutch.

The image below is Ole Worm's Cabinet of Curiosities, from Museum Wormianum, 1655.

theater of nature

Sources
Year Author Title
1685 Molyneux, W. Circulation of the blood as seen, by the help of a Microscope
1693 King, E. Several Observations and Experiments on the Animalcula, in Pepper-water, &c.
1702 Cowper, W. A Description of the Extremities of those Vessels, and the manner the Blood is seen, by the Microscope, to pass from the Arteries to the Veins in Quadrupeds when living.
1705 Rumphuis, G. E. Amboinsche Rariteitkamer
1718 Leeuwenhoek, A. van Send-Brieven
1912 Woodruff, L. L. Observations on the origin and sequence of the protozoan fauna of hay infusions
1920 Dobell, C. The Discovery of the Intestinal Protozoa of Man
1922 Beijerinck, M. W. De infusies en de ontdekking der bakteriën
1924 Mol, J.C. Antony van Leeuwenhoek (film)
1925 Cole, F. J. The History of Protozoology
1930 Cole, F. J. Early theories of sexual generation
1931 Unger, W. B. The Protozoan Sequence of Five Plant Infusions
1931 Chapman, A. C. The yeast cell: what did Leeuwenhoeck see?
1932 Boeke, J. Leeuwenhoek en de Wetenschap van het Kleine
1933 Seters, W. H. van Leeuwenhoecks Microscopen, Praepareer en Observatiemethodes
1937 Meyer, A. W. Leeuwenhoek as experimental biologist
1937 Cole, F. J. Leeuwenhoek's zoological researches. Part I.
1937 Cohen, B. On Leeuwenhoek's Method of Seeing Bacteria
1944 Cole, F. J. A history of comparative anatomy from Aristotle to the eighteenth century
1948 Birch, L. C. The intrinsic rate of natural increase of an insect population
1950 Fildes, P. Leeuwenhoek Lecture: The evolution of microbiology
1957 Reinhard, E. G. Landmarks of parasitology: I. The discovery of the life cycle of the liver fluke
1961 Schierbeek, A. The history of the investigation into the genesis of gall-nuts
1962 Schierbeek, A. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek on the circulation of the blood
1963 Schierbeek, A. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek en zijn voornaamste ontdekkingen
1964 Pirie, N. W. The Leeuwenhoek Lecture: The size of small organisms
1967 Egerton, F. N. Leeuwenhoek as a founder of animal demography
1970 Jahn, T. L. How to know the Protozoa; a pictured-key for identifying the more common fresh water, marine, and parasitic Protozoa
1975 Smit, P. and J. Heniger Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) and the discovery of bacteria
1976 Porter, J. R. Antony van Leeuwenhoek: Tercentenary of His Discovery of Bacteria
1976 Casida, L. E. Leeuwenhoek's Observation of Bacteria
1977 Kremer, J. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, grondlegger van de spermatologie
1978 Palm, L. C. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek en de Ontdekking der Haarvaten
1978 Houtzager, H. L. Nicolaas van Assendelft en de ontdekking van de bloedsomloop
1981 Ford, B. J. The van Leeuwenhoek Specimens
1982 Smit, P. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and his ideas on spontaneous generation
1982 Baas, P. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and His Observation on the Structure of the Woody Cell Wall
1982 Palm, L. C. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's malacological researches as an example of his biological studies
1982 Snelders, H. A. M. Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's mechanistic view of the world
1982 Lindeboom, G. A. Leeuwenhoek and the problem of sexual reproduction
1982 Baas, P. Leeuwenhoek's contributions to wood anatomy and his ideas on sap transport in plants
1982 Fournier, M. Ontdeckte Onsightbaarheden
1982 Bardell, D. The Roles of the Sense of Taste and Clean Teeth in the Discovery of Bacteria by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
1982 Ford, B. J. The Rotifera of Anthony van Leeuwenhoek.
1982 Bronswijk, J. E. M. H. van Two fellow students of fleas, lice and mites: Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Jan Swammerdam
1983 Ruestow, E. G. Images and ideas: Leeuwenhoek's perception of the spermatozoa
1984 Ruestow, E. G. Leeuwenhoek and the campaign against spontaneous generation
1986 Smit, P. (ed.) Hendrik Engel's Alphabetical List of Dutch Zoological Cabinets and Menageries
1988 Bardell, D. The discovery of microorganisms by Robert Hooke
1992 Bergvelt, E. and R. Kistemaker (ed.) De wereld binnen handbereik
1994 James, J. Van Leeuwenhoek's discoveries of 1677–1678: A look too far
1995 Wolpert, L. Evolution of the cell theory
2001 Finlay, B. J. and G. F. Esteban Exploring Leeuwenhoek's Legacy: the abundance and diversity of protozoa
2003 Tunnacliffe, A. and J. Lapinski Resurrecting Van Leeuwenhoek’s rotifers
2004 Roemer, B. van de Neat Nature: The Relation between Nature and Art in a Dutch Cabinet of Curiosities from the Early Eighteenth Century.
2004 Gest, H. The Discovery of Microorganisms by Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
2004 Gest, H. The Discovery of Microorganisms Revisited
2004 James, J. Van Leeuwenhoeks ontdekking van bacteriën
2005 Egerton, F. N. Invertebrate zoology and parasitology during the 1600s
2005 Ford, B. J. The Discovery of Giardia
2006 Cobb, M. Generation
2006 Egerton, F. N. Leeuwenhoek’s Microscopic Natural History
2007 Gest, H. Fresh Views of 17th-Century Discoveries by Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek
2015 Lane, N. The unseen world
2016 Yong, E. I Contain Multitudes
2019 Robertson, L. A. Was Antoni van Leeuwenhoek secretive?
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Period 6 - 1712-1719

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