VON BAER AND THE RISE OF EMBRYOLOGY
Anatomy investigates the arrangement of organic tissues; embryology, or the science of development, shows how they are produced and arranged. There is no more fascinating division of biological study. As Minot says: "Indeed, the stories which embryology has to tell are the most romantic known to us, and the wildest imaginative creations of Scott or Dumas are less startling than the innumerable and almost incredible shifts of rôle and change of character which embryology has to entertain us with in her histories."
Embryology is one of the most important biological sciences in furnishing clues to the past history of animals. Every organism above the very lowest, no matter how complex, begins its existence as a single microscopic cell, and between that simple state and the fully formed condition every gradation of structure is exhibited. Every time an animal is developed these constructive changes are repeated in orderly sequence, and one who studies the series of steps in development is led to recognize that the process of building an animal's body is one of the most wonderful in all nature.
Rudimentary Organs.—But, strangely enough, the course of development in any higher organism is not straightforward, but devious. Instead of organs being produced in the most direct manner, unexpected by-paths are followed, as when all higher animals acquire gill-clefts and many other rudimentary organs not adapted to their condition of life. Most of the rudimentary organs are transitory, and bear testimony, as hereditary survivals, to the line of ancestry. They are clues by means of which phases in the evolution of animal life may be deciphered.
Bearing in mind the continually shifting changes through which animals pass in their embryonic development, one begins to see why the adult structures of animals are so difficult to understand. They are not only complex; they are also greatly modified. The adult condition of any organ or tissue is the last step in a series of gradually acquired modifications, and is, therefore, the farthest departure from that which is ancestral and archetypal. But in the process of formation all the simpler conditions are exhibited. If, therefore, we wish to understand an organ or an animal, we must follow its development, and see it in simpler conditions, before the great modifications have been added.
The tracing of the stages whereby cells merge into tissues, tissues into organs, and determining how the organs by combinations build up the body, is embryology. On account of the extended applications of this subject in biology, and the light which it throws on all structural studies, we shall be justified in giving its history at somewhat greater length than that adopted in treating of other topics.
Five Historical Periods.—The story of the rise of this interesting department of biology can, for convenience, be divided into five periods, each marked by an advance in general knowledge. These are: (1) the period of Harvey and Malpighi; (2) the period of Wolff; (3) the period of Von Baer; (4) the period from Von Baer to Balfour; and (5) the period of Balfour, with an indication of present tendencies. Among all the leaders Von Baer stands as a monumental figure at the parting of the ways between the new and the old—the sane thinker, the great observer.