Woman in Science Part 20

Men of learning and eminence, on pa.s.sing through Bologna, invariably made it a point to call on the learned _professora_ in order to make her acquaintance and to see her wonderful anatomical collection, which was celebrated throughout Europe as _Supellex Manzoliniana_. Among these visitors was Joseph II of Austria. So greatly was His Majesty impressed by Anna's rare intellectual attainments and by her marvelous skill in reproducing the various parts of the "human form divine" that he could not take leave of her without showing his appreciation of them by loading her with gifts worthy of a sovereign.[167]

A contemporary of Anna Manzolini, who also distinguished herself in the preparation of anatomical models, was the French woman, Mlle. Biheron.

Her facsimiles of parts of the human body were, according to Mme. de Genlis, so true to nature that they could not be distinguished from the originals. This led the facetious Chevalier Ringle, after examining a specimen of her handiwork, to declare, "Verily, it is so perfect that it lacks only the odor of the natural object."

While yet prince royal, Gustavus of Sweden visited the French Academy of Sciences in Paris. Here he was entertained by a number of experiments in anatomy. The demonstrator was Mlle. Biheron, who is said to have had a veritable pa.s.sion for both anatomy and surgery. So impressed was Gustavus with the extraordinary skill and knowledge of this gifted daughter of France that he offered her the position of demonstrator of anatomy in the royal University of Sweden.

Other branches of science, apparently quite as alien as anatomy to women's taste and talent, are mineralogy and metallurgy. Yet as early as the first half of the seventeenth century, the Baroness de Beausoleil had achieved a great reputation by her investigations into the mineral treasures of France. Indeed, she may, strange as it may appear, be regarded as the first mining engineer of her native land. She details the qualifications of a mining engineer and tells us he must, among other things, be well versed in chemistry, mineralogy, geometry, mechanics and hydraulics. As for herself, she a.s.sures us that she devoted thirty years of unremitting study to these divers branches.

To Mme. de Beausoleil is also attributed the glory of awakening her countrymen's interest in the mineral resources of France, and of showing them how their proper exploitation would inure not only to the credit of the nation abroad but also to its prosperity at home.

She was the author of two works which prove that she was a woman of rare attainments combined with exceptional breadth of view and political ac.u.men. She was deeply concerned in the development of the mineral resources of her country and foresaw how greatly they could be made to contribute to the augmentation of the nation's finances.

Her work ent.i.tled _La Rest.i.tution de Pluton_ is a report on the mines and ore deposits of France, and is a doc.u.ment as precious as it is curious. It was addressed to Cardinal Richelieu, and shows how the French monarch could, if the subterranean treasures of the country were properly developed, become the greatest ruler in Christendom and his subjects the happiest of all peoples.

Another report by this energetic and enthusiastic woman is in the same strain. In it she proves how the King of France, by utilizing the underground riches of his country, could make himself and his people independent of all other nations.[168]

In these two productions Mme. de Beausoleil treats of the science of mining, the different kinds of mines, the a.s.saying of ores and the divers methods of smelting them, as well as of the general principles of metallurgy, as then understood. But, unlike the majority of her contemporaries, this enlightened woman had no patience with those who believed that the earth's hidden treasures could not be discovered without recourse to magic or to the aid of demons. She was unsparing in her ridicule of those who had faith in the existence of gnomes and kobolds, or thought that ore deposits could be located only by divining-rods or similar foolish contrivances which were relics of an ignorant and superst.i.tious age.

The same century that witnessed the exploring activity of the Baroness de Beausoleil saw the beginnings of the notable achievements of a daughter of Germany, well known in the annals of science as Maria Sibylla Merian. Born in Frankfort in 1647, she died in Amsterdam in 1717, after a somewhat checkered career, most of which was devoted to the pursuit of natural history. So fond was she of flowers and insects that it is said they told her all their secrets.

After having familiarized herself with the fauna and flora of her native land, she proceeded to investigate the collections of the princ.i.p.al European cabinets of natural history. This only fired her ambition to see more of the world and study Nature where she is seen in her greatest splendor and luxuriance.

She accordingly resolved to undertake a journey to the equatorial regions of South America. Such a voyage can now be made with comparative ease, but in her days it was fraught with discomforts and dangers of all kinds, and one that no woman thought to venture on unless obliged to do so by stern necessity.

But she was set on investigating animals and plants in their own habitats in the glorious and exuberant flora of the tropics and, accompanied by her two daughters, Helena and Dorothea, she embarked for Surinam. Here, a.s.sisted by her daughters, who, like their mother, were both skillful artists, the intrepid naturalist spent two years in studying the wonders of plant and animal life that everywhere greeted her delighted vision. All the time not occupied in research work was devoted to sketching and painting those superb insects that are so abundant in tropical fields and forests.[169]

Returning to Holland with her precious scientific treasures, she began the preparation of a work that will long endure as a monument to her knowledge and industry. It was a magnificent volume in folio on the insects of Surinam. It appeared simultaneously in Dutch and Latin, and was subsequently translated into French.

In ill.u.s.trating this sumptuous work, Frau Merian was greatly a.s.sisted by her younger daughter, Dorothea. The etchings and hand-colored reproductions of the gorgeous b.u.t.terflies and flowers of Surinam commanded universal admiration, and marked a new epoch in book-making.

Even to-day this n.o.ble volume is eagerly sought by both book-lovers and men of science, for it is not only a work of rare conception and beauty but also one of exceptional accuracy in ill.u.s.tration and statement of fact.[170]

Besides etchings of multiform insects, lizards and batrachians indigenous to Dutch Guiana, there were in this unique volume carefully executed ill.u.s.trations of plants and trees peculiar to tropical America, such as vanilla, cacao, and the species of manihot which const.i.tutes the staff of life of so large a portion of the population in the basins of the Amazon and the Orinoco.

A new and enlarged edition of this work was published after Frau Merian's death by her daughter Dorothea. The same gifted daughter showed her interest in her parent's work and her devotion to her memory by bringing out a beautifully ill.u.s.trated edition of her mother's earliest work which treated of the wonderful life-history of silkworms.[171]

The century following that which had celebrated the scientific triumphs of Maria Merian found in Josephine Kablick, born in 1787 in Hohenelbe, Bohemia, a woman who was destined to prove a worthy successor, as a nature-student, of the noted daughter of Frankfort-on-the-Main.

From her tenderest years she exhibited a pa.s.sionate love for every form of plant life. In addition to this, she had, while yet young, the good fortune of studying under the best botanists of her time.

Soon she became an enthusiastic collector and was in a short time the happy possessor of a herbarium which contained many new species of plants which she had discovered during her frequent botanical excursions. From making collections for her private herbarium, she was gradually led to make collections for the schools and colleges of her native country, as well as for the museums and learned societies of various parts of Europe. Many public inst.i.tutions owed to her cordial cooperation some of the choicest treasures in their herbaria, and not a few botanical writers of her day found in her an intelligent and sympathetic collaborator.

But Frau Kablick's interest in nature was not confined to plants. She was an a.s.siduous student of paleontology as well as of botany, and the many fossil animals and plants named in her honor testify to her success in the pursuit of her favorite branches of science.

There was nothing of the conventional blue-stocking about this ardent votary of nature. Strong and healthy, neither wind nor rain interfered with her fieldwork in botany or paleontology. It was her greatest pleasure to roam through dark forests and scale high mountains in search of new species of plants and fossils. And the success which rewarded her efforts was such that the old and trained naturalists among her male friends had reason to envy her good fortune as an explorer.

But Frau Kablick never permitted her frequent excursions, or her devotion to science, to cause her to neglect the duties of her household. Fortunately, her husband was also an ardent student of nature, and while his wife was devoting her attention to botany and paleontology, he was making investigations in zoology and mineralogy.

They spent fifty happy years together in the pursuit of science and their joint efforts contributed not a little toward the advancement of the branches of science to which they had devoted their lives with such well-directed effort and enthusiasm.

As the fruitful life of Josephine Kablick who had shed such l.u.s.ter on her s.e.x in Bohemia was drawing to a close, a young woman in Germany, Amalie Dietrich by name, was preparing herself to fill the void which would be occasioned by her predecessor's death. Her first love, as a young girl, was plant life, and this was subsequently accentuated by her husband, who was not only a botanist himself but also one who belonged to a distinguished family of botanists.

A keen observer and an indefatigable collector, Frau Dietrich soon became known throughout Europe as a botanist of marked ability and daring. She was wont, unaccompanied, to climb the highest peaks of the Salzburg Alps, and spend entire weeks there seeking new species of Alpine flora. During the day she explored the deep ravines and clambered along the brambly ledges of beetling precipices, and during the night she sought shelter and repose in the humble hut of some hospitable herdsman.

Valuable, however, as was Amalie Dietrich's work in the Austrian Alps, it was but a preparation for that which some years later she was to enter upon in far-off Australia. Here she devoted twelve of the best years of her life to the cultivation of botany in the virgin soil of Queensland. Here, too, she surprised everyone by her venturesome spirit no less than by her irrepressible zeal in making collections. Heedless of danger, she plunged quite alone into the wilderness and spent days and weeks at a time with the wild aborigines.

But she secured what she went in quest of,--a large and valuable collection of plants, containing many new and interesting species.

Besides these, she was able to bring back with her to Europe a large ma.s.s of zoological specimens as well as countless domestic utensils and implements of warfare and husbandry employed by the savages among whom she so frequently journeyed and with whose manners and customs she eventually became so familiar.

Modest and trustworthy, Frau Dietrich had a host of friends in the scientific world, and the number of plants which bear her name are not only a tribute to her worth, but a striking evidence of the extent of her activity in the pursuit of the science which became the absorbing pa.s.sion of her life.[172]

Of Russian women who have become specially noted for their contributions to natural science, a very prominent place must be a.s.signed to Sophia Pereyaslawzewa. After receiving the doctorate of science in the University of Zurich, she became director of the biological station at Sebastopol, a position she held with great eclat during twelve years.

Here she made numerous important researches on manifold forms of marine life and prepared many works for the press in German and French, as well as in her native Russian. Her _Monographie de Turbellaries de la Mer Noire_, a large and beautifully ill.u.s.trated volume published at Odessa in 1892, placed her at once among biologists of the first rank. Indeed, so meritorious was this production of the talented daughter of Holy Russia that the Congress of Naturalists in 1893 did not hesitate to recognize its exceptional value by conferring on the fair auth.o.r.ess a special prize.

This gifted biologist has since rendered distinct service in the cause of science by her explorations of the Gulf of Naples and the coasts of France. Her activity is prodigious, and the long list of books and monographs which she has published on the lower forms of marine life in the Black and Mediterranean seas shows that she has a capacity for work that is truly extraordinary.

Here is, probably, the place to make mention of a woman of encyclopaedic mind, Clemence Augustine Royer, who was born in 1830 in Nantes, France.

She wrote on such a variety of subjects that it is difficult to cla.s.sify her. She was in no sense of the word a specialist, and she seems by temperament to have been averse to confining herself to any one branch of knowledge.

Her first work to attract particular attention was one on a topic connected with political economy. A prize had been offered for the discussion of this subject, and the little French woman acquitted herself so well that she had the honor of sharing the prize with the noted Proudhon. She has also written many works on philosophy and physics. Among these are two which attracted considerable notice at the time of their publication. In one of them she attacks the positivism of Comte; in the other she a.s.sails Laplace's hypothesis regarding the origin of the material universe.

But the work which made her famous, particularly in France, was her translation into French in 1862 of Darwin's _Origin of Species_. It is safe to say that this version created as much of a sensation in France as the original had caused in Great Britain and America. Her preface to the work of the English naturalist, in which she indicates the results which flow from an acceptance of the transformist theory, created a veritable storm in both religious and scientific circles.

So gratified was Madame Royer by the impression made by this preface and so pleased was she with the controversy which she had started, that she expanded her summary of the theory of evolution as therein given and published it in 1870 under the t.i.tle of _Origine de l'Homme et de Societes_. This production was so revolutionary in character and so subversive of teachings long held sacred that it provoked an indignant protest from all quarters, and the author was at once ranked with such radical exponents of the new science as Voght, Buchner and Haeckel.

After the appearance of this production, she wrote numerous other works, several of them on subjects relating to natural science, especially in its connection with anthropology and prehistoric archaeology. And so great was her breadth of view and so exceptional was her grasp of all subjects discussed by her that Renan declared of her, _Elle est presque un homme de genie_--She is almost a man of genius.

Mme. Royer was frequently spoken of as a candidate for the French Inst.i.tute, but she was so well aware of the prejudices against the admission of women to membership in this learned body that she never allowed herself to consider the proposal seriously. She was certainly a brainy woman, and in her own department of intellectual effort she exhibited as much talent as did George Sand and Mme. de Stael in literature and history.

An entirely different type of woman from the radical and disputatious Mme. Royer was the charming and cultured lady, Miss Eleanor Ormerod, her contemporary, who, in her chosen department of science, won both fame and the lasting grat.i.tude of her fellowmen.

Miss Ormerod, unlike Mme. Royer, was preeminently a specialist, and the branch of science in which she achieved distinction was entomology, or rather that branch of it known as economic entomology. From her childhood she manifested an unusual interest in all forms of insects, but particularly in those which are serviceable to mankind or are destructive to farms and gardens, orchards and forests.

Fortunately for the gratification of her peculiar bent of mind, nearly half of Miss Ormerod's life was spent in a locality which was specially favorable to the study of insects which are obnoxious to the gardener, the farmer and the forester. This was at the confluence of the Wye and the Severn, where her father owned a large landed estate, part of which was under cultivation and part wood and park land.

Here the young girl made her first collection of insects, and here she began her studies on the cause and nature of the parasitic attacks upon crops. Here she first realized the frightful ravages that were occasioned by the manifold insect pests that infest not only trees, shrubs, cereals and vegetables, but also flocks and herds as well. And here, too, she resolved to devote her life to devising preventive and remedial treatment for the evils which were robbing the husbandman of so great a part of the fruits of his toil.

After taking this generous resolution, the life of our young heroine was, like that of Liebig and Pasteur, devoted to the welfare of her fellowmen. And like these n.o.ble benefactors of their race, her thought was always how she might prevent the losses and increase the products of the tillers of the soil. Entomology with her was not mere nomenclature--a knowledge of strange and fantastic names, which, with the ignorant, const.i.tutes a distinction--but one of the most practical and useful of the sciences.

Miss Ormerod might, had she so elected, have won fame as a systematic entomologist and as a distinguished contributor to the already long list of genera and species of insects. She might have devoted herself to theoretical work, or bent her energies towards the general advancement of the science, like Fabricius, Swammerdam, Westwood and Burnmeister; but she preferred to forego all the glory that might accrue from pursuing such a course, and to direct her efforts in such wise as to be of most service to humanity.

Like the great Pasteur, after his long and laborious experimental researches on silkworm diseases, Miss Ormerod could, at the end of her ill.u.s.trious career, declare with truth: "The results which I have obtained are, perhaps, less brilliant than those which I might have antic.i.p.ated from researches pursued in the field of pure science, but I have the satisfaction of having served my country in endeavoring, to the best of my ability, to discover the remedy for great misery. It is to the honor of a scientific man that he values discoveries which at their birth can only obtain the esteem of his equals, far above those which at once conquer the favor of the crowd by the immediate utility of their application; but, in the presence of misfortune, it is equally an honor to sacrifice everything in the endeavor to relieve it."[173]

Miss Ormerod's labors were not, it is true, instrumental in rescuing from destruction a nation's chief industries, as were Pasteur's in the case of his famous researches on the phyloxera of the grape vine or the pebrine of the silkworm. Nor had they to do with such frightful industrial disturbances as have frequently been occasioned by rinderpest or by the potato blight in Ireland in 1845.

This is true in so far as any one pest is concerned. But when one reflects on the scope of Miss Ormerod's investigations and considers how far-reaching were her researches and how many and diverse industries were embraced by the remedial and prophylactic measures which she proposed, one cannot but realize the immense importance of her life-work.

The fact that her activities were confined chiefly to old and well-known pests--insects from which the farmer and the gardener and the forester had suffered for centuries, and which they had come to regard as necessary and inevitable evils--does not detract from the merit and the value of her labors. That she should have taken up a work which affected so many people and have been so successful in abating, or in entirely removing evils which had so long afflicted agriculturists and stock-growers, shows that she was a woman of rare courage and determination as well as one of invincible persistence and of intellectual resources of a very high order.

During more than a quarter of a century Miss Ormerod devoted practically the whole of her time to the study of economic entomology and to spreading a knowledge of it among her countrymen. From 1877 to 1898 she published annual reports on injurious insects and sent them broadcast throughout Great Britain and her colonies. In addition to this she wrote a number of manuals and textbooks on insects injurious to food crops, forest trees, orchards and bush fruits.