Collection académique

Author:

Berryat, J. (ed.)

Volume:

1 - 13

Publisher:

Dijon: Chez Francois Desventes

Year:

1754 - 1787

Leeuwenhoek's death brought an end to his publication of the letters in Dutch and Latin. Thirty years later, Jean Berryat published excerpts in French translation in the context of making the by then century-old early editions of Philosophical Transactions available to in the language that by then was rivaling Latin as educated Europe's lingua franca.

Berryat's plan produced two series, the French part in 16 volumes from 1754 to 1787 and the foreign part (Partie étrangère) in 13 volumes from 1755 to 1779. The title page of Volume II for 1755 (on right; click to enlarge) reads:

ACADEMIC COLLECTION composed of Memoirs, Proceedings, or Journals of the most famous Academies and Foreign Literary Societies, Extracts of the best Periodicals Works, individual Treatises & the rarest Fugitives Pieces;

On Natural History and Botany, Experimental Physics and Chemistry, Medicine and Anatomy,

Translated into French, and put in order by a Societe de Gens de Lettres [note: not to be confused with the French writers' association of the same name founded by Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, and others in 1838]

Volume II. Containing the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, from the year 1665 until 1678.

They devoted this whole second volume to articles in Philosophical Transactions that, in retrospect, seemed the most interesting for their readers. Of the first 38 Leeuwenhoek letters in Philosophical Transactions or Hooke's Philosophical Collections up until April 1686, they published all or part of 27 of the Philosophical Transactions articles, themselves being extracts from the original. Those marked with an asterisk * on the table below were excerpts of these excerpts. The others were the translations of the complete text that was in Philosophical Transactions.

The first 249 pages of Volume VI for 1761 was billed as a Supplement to Philosophical Transactions. The editors went back through Philosophical Transactions beginning again in 1665 and translated letters that weren't in Volume II. In Leeuwenhoek's case, they published the rest of Letter 2 of August 15, 1673. These pages of Collection académique included none of the figures with any of the letters.

The second part of Volume VII for 1766 was devoted to the Philosophical Transactions from 1679, no. 142, though 1694, no. 207, that is, picking up where they left off in Volume II. During the latter half of the period, from 1686 until 1692, Philosophical Transactions editor Edmond Halley did not publish Leeuwenhoek. As a result, few of his letters were included. During that time, 13 articles in Philosophical Transactions excerpted Leeuwenhoek's letters. Collection académique published all of six of them and excerpts from two of them.

Overall, only a small fraction of the figures in Philosophical Transactions were re-produced for Collection académique but a quarter of them were Leeuwenhoek's. In that sense, Leeuwenhoek was well represented. In manuscript, these 27 letters had 132 figures. The editors published only 27 of the figures in Collection académique on plates made by French engravers who were looking at the Philosophical Transactions plates, not the original drawings. The Philosophical Transactions figures were the reverse of the orginals that Leeuwenhoek sent. Ironically then, the Collection académique figures, being the reverse of Philosophical Transactions, were configured in the same way as the original drawings.

These letters were written to Henry Oldenburg, William Brouncker, Nehemiah Grew, Robert Hooke, Christopher Wren, Francis Aston, and the final two to Members of the Royal Society.

Letter date	AB/CL #	AvL #	Addressed to ...	Collection académique
1673年04月28日	1	1	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 381-382, 388-390	10 of 10
1673年08月15日	2	2	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 393-395 - first part Vol. VI p. 103 - second part
1674年04月07日	5	3	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 393-395
1674年06月01日	8	4	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 395-398 *
1674年07月06日	9	5	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 399-401
1674年09月07日	11	6	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 403-406
1674年12月04日	13	8	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 416-417
1675年08月14日	18	12	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 417-421
1676年04月21日	22	15	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 434-437
1676年10月09日	26	18	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 454-461
1677年03月23日	31	19	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 462-464
1677年05月14日	32	20	Oldenburg	Vol. II pp. 464-468
1677-11-00	35	22	Brouncker	Vol. II pp. 490-491
1678年03月18日	38	24	Grew	Vol. II pp. 492-493 *
1678年05月31日	39	25	Grew	Vol. II pp. 486, 493-494	2 of 8
1679年04月25日	43	28	Grew	Vol. II pp. 531-533
1680年11月12日	65	33	Hooke	Vol. II pp. 540-545
1682年03月03日	67	35	Hooke	Vol. II pp. 552-556
1682年04月04日	68	36	Hooke	Vol. II pp. 557-559
1683年01月22日	70	37	Wren	Vol. VII pp. 47-48 *
1683年07月16日	72	38	Wren	Vol. VII pp. 57-58 *
1683年09月17日	76	39	Aston	Vol. VII pp. 64-68	9 of 10
1683年12月28日	79	40	Aston	Vol. VII pp. 68-71	6 of 11
1684年04月14日	80	41	Aston	Vol. VII pp. 76-80
1684年07月25日	81	42	Aston	Vol. VII pp. 83-85
1685年10月12日	88	47	Members Royal Society	Vol. VII pp. 129-131
1686年04月02日	90	49	Members Royal Society	Vol. VII pp. 125-128

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What Leeuwenhoek wrote ...
Wrote Letter L-001 of 1673年04月28日 to Henry Oldenburg about mould and a bee's stinger and eye
Wrote Letter L-002 of 1673年08月15日 to Henry Oldenburg about the bee, the movement of liquids in wood and food in a louse, and the composition of air
Wrote Letter L-006 of 1674年04月07日 to Henry Oldenburg about globules in milk and blood, the growth of hair and nails, and the anatomy of a louse
Wrote Letter L-011 of 1674年06月01日 to Henry Oldenburg about movement of liquid in capillary tubes, structure of body parts, growth of skin, and the size of red blood cells
Wrote Letter L-012 of 1674年07月06日 to Henry Oldenburg bout sweat, hair, fat, tears, and improved capillary tubes
Wrote Letter L-015 of 1674年09月07日 to Henry Oldenburg about the anatomy of the eye and optic nerve of a cow, minerals eg. salt, clay, English and Flemish earth; first mention of protozoa in stagnant water
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
Wrote Letter L-026 of 1675年08月14日 to Henry Oldenburg about blood, taste of saps, sugar, and salt, and the mechanics of taste and digestion
Wrote Letter L-035 of 1676年04月21日 to Henry Oldenburg about movement of liquid in ash and other trees, little animals in wine, and cinnamon and taste
Wrote Letter L-040 of 1676年10月09日 to Henry Oldenburg about little animals in various waters and spice infusions, the relationship of their shape to taste, and whether there were little animals in the air
Wrote Letter L-054 of 1677年03月23日 to Henry Oldenburg about the quantity of little creatures in one drop of water
Wrote Letter L-056 of 1677年05月14日 to Henry Oldenburg about muscles, blood, the movement of fluids in fruit, moxa, and cotton
Wrote Letter L-060 of 1677年11月09日 to William Brouncker about sperm and their movements in fresh human semen
Wrote Letter L-070 of 1678年03月18日 to Nehemiah Grew about sperm in other animals and what Harvey and de Graaf got wrong about reproduction
Wrote Letter L-073 of 1678年05月31日 to Nehemiah Grew about teeth, bone, hair, and sperm and what de Graaf got wrong about ovulation
Wrote Letter L-080 of 1679年04月25日 to Nehemiah Grew about living little animals in fish, hare, and dogs and his calculation that more than ten times as many living animals come from the milt of a cod as there are people living on the Earth
Wrote Letter L-111 of 1680年11月12日 to Robert Hooke about blood globules, lees of wine, globules in rain water, milk vessels, reproduction, little animals in the male seed of animals, and their incomprehensible smallness
Wrote Letter L-116 of 1682年03月03日 to Robert Hooke about muscle fibres, hair, the cell nucleus in the erythrocytes of fishes, the liver of salmons, beards of oysters, and the structure and growth of oyster shell
Wrote Letter L-119 of 1682年04月04日 to Robert Hooke about the structure of the muscle tissue of lobsters and shrimps.
Wrote Letter L-122 of 1683年01月22日 to Christopher Wren about the function of the ovary, muscles of insects, drinking tea and mild beer, erythrocytes, and a theory on the formation of blood
Wrote Letter L-128 of 1683年07月16日 to Christopher Wren about the procreation of frogs, sperm in fowl's egg, reproduction of rabbits, little animals in frog intestines, a theory about digestion in humans and fish, and blood
Wrote Letter L-135 of 1683年09月17日 to Francis Aston about saliva, nasal hairs and blackheads, skin, pores, calluses, and cleaning teeth; the discovery of bacteria in tartar
Wrote Letter L-144 of 1683年12月28日 to Francis Aston about human skin and its diseases, the intestines, the effects of vinegar, the intestinal wall and peristalsis, and an experiment to demonstrate the adsorption of food nutrients in the intestines.
Wrote Letter L-147 of 1684年04月14日 to Francis Aston about lenses and corneas, the function of eye-lids, the involuntariness of blinking, the optic nerve, and the skin of Moors
Wrote Letter L-150 of 1684年07月25日 to Members of the Royal Society about parts of the brain of several animals, chalk stones of gout, leprosy, and the scales of eels
Wrote Letter L-166 of 1685年10月12日 to members of the Royal Society about the beginning of plants in seeds; chyle, sweat, about skin, optic nerve, and bile of fish; salts in beer vinegar and lemon juice; and spirits mixed with blood and wine vinegar
Wrote Letter L-173 of 1686年04月02日 to members of the Royal Society about the structure of bone, the bark of trees, skin and scales, the moisture evaporating from his body, and a little peeling piece of skin