Steno: Life, Science, Philosophy. With Niels Stensen, Prooemium, or "Preface to a Demonstration in the Copenhagen Anatomical Theater in the Year 1673," and Holger Jacobaeus, "Niels Stensen's Anatomical Demonstration no. XVI" and oth er texts translated from the Latin, and: On Diseases in the Bible: A Medical Miscellany, 1672 (review)

The title of Troels Kardel’s monograph on Niels Stensen (Steno) suggests that the volume is more comprehensive than it actually is. Although Kardel presents a survey of the anatomist’s life and work in the first chapter, his principal aim is much more tightly focused: to illuminate Steno’s scientific method as he practiced it and preached it, and in so doing to assert Steno’s lifelong interest in natural philosophy, to correct the common view that he turned away from the world of science after his conversion to Catholicism.

Kardel approaches his subject more as a philosopher of science than as a historian, which is most apparent when he attempts to find in Steno a seventeenth-century precursor of Karl Popper. A comparison between extracts from the writings of Popper and Steno, which the author finds “strikingly similar” (p. 96), fails to convince—even if making such a connection were historically meaningful. However, Kardel offers much of interest to the historian of early modern science and medicine otherwise, not least his illumination of Steno’s position with respect to the important changes in scientific attitudes and practices that gave rise to the appellation “scientific revolution” for this period. Throughout, he builds a case for Steno as consciously applying and presenting a coherent and consistent scientific method, which demanded that hypotheses or expected outcomes be verifiable by repeated observation before they were accepted. For example, Kardel argues that Steno’s use of legalistic speech to distance himself from the bold assertion that glossopetrae were once living shark teeth was in keeping with his methodology, which did not yet permit a strong claim, and he rejects the recent suggestion by Kuang-Tai Hsu that Steno shaped his rhetoric to hide his true opinions and thus avoid offending his ecclesiastical patrons. Kardel’s case is built on a detailed study of Steno’s writings, but we must be careful not to pluck the writer out of his social context; here the philosopher should be tempered by the historian.

Kardel’s essays on Steno are accompanied by three primary sources in translation. The first is Steno’s preface to his anatomical demonstrations of 1673, published two years later in Latin in Thomas Bartholin’s Acta medica (which is reproduced here en face). The second piece is an account of those demonstrations by one of Steno’s students, Holger Jakobsen, the manuscript original of which is photographically reproduced. That Jakobsen appears to have had access to a written version of Steno’s lecture when compiling his notes on the dissections should interest historians of scientific education. Finally, there is a late, short manuscript written by Steno. The English translations adhere closely to the Latin originals but are very readable and are a welcome addition to the history of early modern medicine.

The editors of On Diseases in the Bible, a minor tract by Steno’s contemporary Thomas Bartholin, argue that the work merits translation as one of the earliest contributions to the specialized field of biblical medical historiography. While physicians with a personal interest in diagnosing the ills of scriptural personae might find common ground with Bartholin, the book is perhaps more useful to historians of seventeenth-century medical thought. Specifically, Bartholin’s approach to his subject reveals early modern medicine’s purview. For example, while Bartholin compares...