[A Danish pathography from the 17th century (Johan Valentin Wille) (author's transl)]

A monograph written by the physician Johan Valentin Wille in 1675 is discussed and commented. The monograph was published in Th. Bartholin Acta medica, the first medical journal in Denmark, and was in 1934 translated from Latin into Danish by the physician Eiler Høeg. It givees a detailed description of organ changes and internal parasites found in cattle and hare autopsied on Sealand 1674-75. Vermiform bodies found in the liver of cattle are undoubtedly identical with Fasciola hepatica. The tumorous or cystic formations in the bovine lung and liver correspond certainly with the larval stages of Echinococcus granulosus and the small cysts arranged as "bunches of grapes" on the liver surface and mesentery of hares cannot be anything else than Cysticercus pisiformis. It is possibly the first description of the mentioned parasites in animals in Denmark. The observations are published almost two centuries before the life-cycles of these parasites were finally clarified and about one century before the Danish Veterinary School was established at Christianshavn (in Copenhagen) and the founder Abildgaard started to publish his interesting observations on intestinal parasites.--The monograph is typical for that particular time, reflecting the decline of the medieval humoralism and the growth of the Renaissance science.