Conrad Gessner
Conrad Gessner was a Swiss physician, naturalist, bibliographer, and philologist. Born into a poor family in Zurich, Switzerland, his father and teachers quickly realised his talents and supported him through university, where he studied classical languages, theology and medicine. He became Zurich's city physician, but was able to spend much of his time on collecting, research and writing. Gessner compiled monumental works on bibliography and zoology and was working on a major botanical text at the time of his death from plague at the age of 49. He is regarded as the father of modern scientific bibliography, zoology and botany. He was frequently the first to describe species of plants or animals in Europe, such as the tulip in 1559. A number of plants and animals have been named after him.
Life
Conrad Gessner was born on 26 March 1516, in Zurich, Switzerland, the son of Ursus Gessner, a poor Zurich furrier. His early life was one of poverty and hardship, but Gessner's father realized his talents, and sent him to live with and be schooled by a great uncle, who grew and collected medicinal herbs for a living. Here the boy became familiar with many plants and their medicinal purposes which led to a lifelong interest in natural history.Gessner first attended the Carolinum in Zurich, then later entered the Fraumünster seminary. There he studied classical languages, appearing as Penia in Aristophanes' Plutus, at the age of 15. In school, he impressed his teachers so much that a few of them helped sponsor him so that he could further his education, including arranging a scholarship for him to attend university in France to study theology at the age of 17. There he attended the University of Bourges and University of Paris. Religious persecution forced him to leave Paris for Strasbourg, but being unable to secure employment, he returned to Zurich. One of his teachers in Zurich acted as a foster father to him after the death of his father at the Battle of Kappel, another provided him with three years of board and lodging, while yet another arranged his further education at the upper school in Strasbourg, the Strasbourg Academy. There he broadened his knowledge of ancient languages by studying Hebrew. In 1535, religious unrest drove him back to Zurich, where he made what some considered an imprudent marriage at the age of 19, of a woman from another poor family who had no dowry. Although some of his friends again came to his aid, he was appointed to obtaining a teaching position for him, this was in the lowest class and attracted a stipend barely more than a pittance. However, he then obtained a paid leave of absence to study medicine at the University of Basel.
Throughout his life Gessner was interested in natural history, and collected specimens and descriptions of wildlife through travel and extensive correspondence with other friends and scholars.
In 1543 Arnoldus Arlenius invited Gessner to Venice. Gessner travelled to Italy that same summer. He encountered Venetian printing and a hidden world of Greek manuscripts.
Gessner's approach to research consisted of four main components: observation, dissection, travel to distant lands, and accurate description. This rising observational approach was new to Renaissance scholars because people usually relied completely upon Classical writers for their research. He died of the plague, the year after his ennoblement on 13 December 1565.
Work
Conrad Gessner was a Renaissance polymath, a physician, philosopher, encyclopaedist, bibliographer, philologist, natural historian and illustrator. In 1537, at the age of 21, his publication of a Graecolatin dictionary led to his sponsors obtained for him the professorship of Greek at the newly founded academy of Lausanne. Here he had leisure to devote himself to scientific studies, especially botany, and earn money to further his medical studies.After three years of teaching at Lausanne, Gessner was able to travel to the medical school at the University of Montpellier, where he received his doctoral degree from Basel. He then returned to Zurich to practice medicine, which he continued to do for the rest of his life. There he was also appointed to the post of lecturer of Aristotelean physics at the Carolinum, the precursor of the University of Zurich.
After 1554 he became the city physician. In addition to his duties there, and apart from a few journeys to foreign countries, and annual summer botanical journeys in his native land, and illnesses, he was able to devote himself to research and writing. His expeditions frequently involved visits to mountainous country, below the snow-line. Although primarily for purposes of botanical collection, he also extolled mountain climbing for the sake of exercise and enjoyment of the beauties of nature. In 1541 he prefixed to his treatise on milk and milk products, Libellus de lacte et operibus lactariis a letter addressed to his friend Jacob Avienus of Glarus on the wonders to be found among the mountains, declaring his love for them, and his firm resolve to climb at least one mountain every year, not only to collect flowers, but in order to exercise his body. In 1555 he issued his narrative Descriptio Montis Fracti sive Montis Pilati of his excursion to the Gnepfstein, the lowest point in the Pilatus chain.
Gessner is credited with a number of the first descriptions of species in Europe, both animals such as the brown rat, guinea pig and turkey, as well as plants such as the tulip. He first saw a tulip in April 1559, growing in the garden of the magistrate Johann Heinrich Herwart at Augsburg, and called it Tulipa turcarum, the Turkish tulip. He is also credited with being the first person to describe brown adipose tissue, in 1551, in 1565 the first to document the pencil, and in 1563 among the first Europeans to write about the effects of tobacco.
Publications
Gessner's first work was a Latin-Greek Dictionary, the Lexicon Graeco-Latinum, compiled during his studies in Basel. This was a revision of an original work by the Italian cleric, Varinus Phavorinus or Guarino of Favera, Magnum ac perutile dictionarium. Over his lifetime he was able to produce some 70 publications on many different subjects.His next major work was his unique Bibliotheca, a landmark in the history of bibliography, in which he set out to catalogue all the writers who had ever lived and their works. In addition to his monumental work on animal life, the Historiae animalium, he amassed a very large collection of notes and wood engravings of plants, but only published two botanical works in his lifetime, Historia plantarum et vires and the Catalogus plantarum in four languages. It was in the last decade of his life that he began to compile his major botanical work, Historia plantarum. Although he died prior to its completion, his work was utilised by many other authors over the next two centuries, but was finally published in 1754.
Not content with scientific works, Gessner was also active as a linguist and bibliographer, putting forth in 1555 his book entitled Mithridates. De differentiis linguarum , an account of about 130 known languages, with the Lord's Prayer in twenty-two languages. He also produced edited works of a number of classical authors, including Claudius Aelianus and Marcus Aurelius.
A number of other works appeared after his death, some long after. His work on insects was edited by various authors, including Thomas Penny, until Thomas Muffet brought it to publication as Insectorum sive minimorum animalium theatrum, finally appearing in English translation as The Theatre of Insects in Edward Topsell's History of Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents.
''Bibliotheca universalis'' (1545–1549)
In 1545, after four years of research, Gessner published his remarkable Bibliotheca universalis, an exhaustive catalogue of all known works in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, of all writers who had ever lived, with the titles of their works, and brief annotations. The work, which included his own bio-bibliography, listed some three thousand authors alphabetically, and was the first modern bibliography published since the invention of printing. Through it, Gessner became known as the "father of bibliography." In all, about twelve thousand titles were included.A second part, a thematic index to the work, Pandectarum sive partitionum universalium libri xxi, appeared in 1548. Although the title indicated that twenty one parts were intended, only nineteen books were included. Part 20, intended to include his medical work, was never finished and part 21, a theological encyclopaedia, was published separately in 1549.
''Historia animalium'' (1551–1558)
Gessner's great zoological work, Historiae animalium, is a 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals that appeared in Zurich in 4 volumes between 1551 and 1558: quadrupeds, amphibians, birds, and fishes. A fifth folio on snakes was issued in 1587. A German translation of the first 4 volumes titled Thierbůch was published in Zurich in 1563. This book was considered to be the first modern zoological work. It built a bridge between ancient, medieval and modern science.In Historia animalium Gessner combines data from old sources, such as the Old Testament, Aristotle, Pliny, folklore, and medieval bestiaries, adding his own observations. He created a new, comprehensive description of the Animal Kingdom. This was the first attempt by anyone to describe many animals accurately. The book unlike many works of its time was illustrated with hand-colored woodcuts drawn from personal observations by Gessner and his colleagues.
Even though he sought to distinguish observed facts from myths and popular errors and was known for his accurate depiction of many animals in Historia animalium, he also included many fictional animals such as the Unicorn and the Basilisk, which he had only heard about from medieval bestiaries. But when Gessner doubted the accuracy of the opinions he relayed in his own writings, or the validity of the illustrations he included, he clearly said so. Besides any plant or animal's potential advantage to people, Gessner was interested in learning about them because of the moral lessons they could teach and the divine truths they might tell. He went into as much detail about some unreal animals as he did about real ones. Later in 1556 he also combined real and fictional creatures in his edition of the works of Claudius Aelianus.
Historia animalium includes sketches for many well-known animals, and some fictional ones, including unicorns and mermaids. He accomplished many of his works in a large part due to the web of acquaintances he established with leading naturalists throughout Europe, who included John Caius, English court physician to the Tudors and second founder of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Not only did they send him their ideas, but also sent him plants, animals and gems. He returned the favor – and kept helpful specimens coming – by naming plants after correspondents and friends.