Edward Tyson's Orang-outang*

So far as the study of human and comparative anatomy is concerned the seventeenth century exhibited to a high degree what Cole has so felicitously called the development of craftsmanship. During this century anatomists in many parts of Europe searched for the smallest details of the anatomy of man and of animals. In this century, too, was developed the comparative approach to anatomy. The solid foundation of the macroscopic anatomy of the bodies of most animals was laid early in the century by the excellent work of Volcher Coiter, Hieronymus Fabricius, Giulio Casserio and Carlo Ruini, to be followed later by Marco Aurelio Severino, Gerard Blaes, Marcello Malpighi, Jan Swammerdam, Martin Lister, Thomas Willis, Nehemiah Grew, Frederik Ruysch and many others. The insatiable curiosity of Antony van Leeuwenhoek commenced our knowledge of the wonders to be seen by magnifying glasses and microscopes and the lively descriptions he gave in his famous series of letters to the Royal Society incited the interest ofmembers of that already distinguished body. Quite apart from the individual endeavour of many biologists the seventeenth century saw the establishment of collective research with the formation of groups of workers banded together in the common search for knowledge. From these initially small gatherings emerged the Royal Society, the Private College of Amsterdam, the Academia Naturae Curiosorum, the Copenhagen group under Thomas Bartholin and the Academie Royale des Sciences. The publication of this collective research in the Philosophical Transactions, the Acta Medica & Philosophia Hafniensia, Claude Perrault's Mbnoires pour servir a l'histoire naturelle des animaux and elsewhere, greatly added to biological knowledge. By 1700 it is true to say that there was available to the scientist with an inquiring mind a vast quantity of detailed information on the structure of animals and of man. Much of this was scattered and such was the condition of many libraries that there would have been very few places where a significant percentage of the information would be easily available to the worker. One of those who had contributed much of the detail and who today is not so well known as he should be, but who was certainly the most outstanding comparative anatomist in Britain in his day was Edward Tyson. Born in Bristol on 20 January 1650/51, he was the son of a mercer. Schooled in Bristol, he matriculated at Magdalen Hall, Oxford, in 1667, obtained his arts degrees (B.A., 1670; M.A., 1673) and studied medicine, graduating in 1677. While a student Tyson came under the guiding influence of Robert Plot and when he came to London in 1677 obtained the friendship of Robert Hooke. These two men undoubtedly influenced Tyson's researches. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1679, he was incorporated Doctor of Physick at Bennet College, Cambridge, in 1680 and the same year admitted a Candidate of the Royal * wW TysoN: Orang-Outan, sive Homo Sylvestris: or, the Anatomy of a Pygmie compared with that ofa Monkey, an Ape, and a Man. London, 1699. A facsimile with an introduction by Ashley Montagu. London, Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1966. Price: £22 lOs. Od.