[Olaus Rudbeck as scientist and professor of medicine]

Olaus Rudbeck (1630-1702) was one of the pioneers in the study of lymphatic vessels. As a young student at Uppsala University he began dissecting small animals with great diligence and found the lymphatic connection between the intestines and the circulating blood, leading the prepared nutrients via the thoracic duct to the veins. By applying ligatures to the lymphatic vessels he could observe the direction of the flow. His observations confirmed William Harvey's newly advanced theory about the circulation of the blood and were in agreement with the then modern mechanistic view of body functions. Rudbeck demonstrated his findings for Queen Christina in the spring of 1652 and received from her money for a visit to the University of Leiden, Holland in the autumn of 1653. He had just before his departure published his own discoveries, but the Danish anatomist Thomas Bartholin had reported very similar results slightly before. During his stay in Holland (autumn 1653-summer 1654) where he was admired for his anatomical skillfullness, a priority dispute began between him and one of Bartholin's students, lasting for years. Back in Uppsala Rudbeck began and extensive activity, including the foundations of the botanical garden, the anatomical theatre and other university buildings. He became a professor of medicine in 1660 but soon left his anatomical studies for work in several disciplines and trades. He was a prominent master-builder and garden architect as well as an astronomer, botanist, musician and archaeologist. In the last mentioned capacity he published his ill-famed Atlantica, a gigantic reconstruction of the history of old Sweden from the times of the Flood, through the era of vast conquests including Russia and the Mediterranean region, supposed to have take place in the third and second millenium B.C. Rudbeck mingled philogical methods and mythological explanations with excavations and natural history to reach his phantastic conclusions. At the same time the Atlantica (in three volumes plus one unfinished) is a very personal document, demonstrating i.a. that he had a medical practices, including advanced anatomical surgery, as when helping at the birth of one of his children. The boy was christened "Johannes Caesar" in commemoration of the event, but apparently it was not a regular Caeserian section.