praised by the
learned of your country. The fatherland congratulates itself upon
such a citizen, I upon such a pupil, through whose efforts anatomy
makes daily progress, and our lympathic vessels are traced out more
and more. You divide honors with Wharton, since you have added to
his internal duct an external one, and have thereby discovered the
sources of the saliva concerning which many have hitherto dreamed
much, but which no one has (permit the expression) pointed out with
the finger. Continue, my Steno, to follow the path to immortal glory
which true anatomy holds out to you.

Under the stimulus of such encouragement, it is no wonder that Stensen
continued his original work with eminent success. He published an
extensive article on the glands of the eye and the vessels of the
nose.

Bartholini wrote to him again: "Your fame is growing from day to day,
for your pen and your sharp eye know no rest." Later he wrote {145}
again: "You may count upon the favor of the king as well as upon the
applause of the learned." After three years at the University of
Amsterdam, Steno returned to Copenhagen, where he published his
"Anatomical Observations Concerning the Muscles and Glands." It was in
this book that he announced his persuasion that the heart was a
muscle. As he said himself, "the heart has been considered the seat of
natural warmth, the throne of the soul; but if you examine it more
closely, it turns out to be nothing but a muscle. The men of the past
would not have been so grossly mistaken with regard to it, had they
not preferred their imaginary theories to the results of the simple
observation of nature." It is easy to understand that this observation
created a very great sensation. It had much to do with overthrowing
certain theoretic systems of medicine, and nearly a century later the
distinguished physiologist, Haller, did not hesitate to proclaim the
volume in which it occurs, as a "golden book."

Stensen's studies in anatomy stamp him as an original genius of a high
order, and this is all the more remarkable because his career occurs
just in those years when there were distinguished discoverers in
anatomy in every country in Europe. When Stensen began his work in
anatomy, Harvey was still alive. The elder Bartholini, the first who
ever established an anatomical museum, was another of his
contemporaries. Among the names of distinguished anatomists {146} with
whom Stensen was brought inti