Content area
Full Text
The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth. By Alan Cutler. (New York: Dutton. 2003. Pp.xii, 228. $23.95.) Nicolaus Steno studied medicine in his native Denmark, spent time in the Netherlands, where he befriended Baruch Spinoza, traveled to France, and then to Italy, and became Court Physician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany. In Italy, he converted to Catholicism, was ordained, and subsequently made a bishop; he spent the last years of his life in Germany, where he met G. W. Leibniz. Steno's skills in dissection were legendary. he made significant anatomical discoveries, including the excretory duct of the parotid gland and the tear glands. he investigated the musculature of the heart and brain anatomy, both inquiries yielding conclusions at odds with those proposed by Rene Descartes, a powerful influence on Steno from early on. Steno also explained muscle action in mechanistic terms in a treatise written in more geometrico. The dissection of a great shark led him to examine its teeth and to hypothesize...