of a preservative fluid widely known as "Liquor balsamicus." Tradition says that in one instance, that of a child whose corpse had been treated in this manner by Ruysch, the face presented such a perfectly life-like appearance that the Czar, as he passed near the object, thought he was looking upon a sleeping child and gave it a kiss.
The aged professor lived to be ninety-three, and continued giving his lectures on anatomy almost up to the day of his death, which resulted from accidental injuries. When it became clear that these were of so serious a nature that he could not possibly recover, he asked to be carried on a stretcher into the assembly room in order that he might say a farewell to the students who had been attending his lectures.
Although some critics have intimated that Ruysch should be ranked merely as a very clever mechanic in the domain of anatomy, there are certain well-established facts which show that this estimate of the man is unfair. It is known, for example, that he was the first anatomist to call attention to the features which distinguish the male from the female skeleton (e.g., the differences in the form of the pelvis and of the thorax). Ruysch also advanced our knowledge of the vascular system by means of the improvements which he effected in the method of injecting blood-vessels. His skill in this special work was so great that people were wont to say of him that he possessed the fingers of a fairy and the eyes of a lynx. It was Ruysch too who furnished the first descriptions of the bronchial blood-vessels and of the vascular plexuses of the heart. Finally, the term "membrana Ruyschiana," in connection with the choroid of the eye, bears testimony to the fact that he was also an original worker in this very difficult corner of the field of human anatomy.
The crowning event in the life of Ruysch—an event which shows how wasteful many of us men are of our productive powers when we deliberately retire from all participation in active work, physical or mental, at the comparatively early age of sixty-five—occurred in 1717, when he had attained the age of seventy-nine. Peter the Great had
