Ole Worm

Ole Worm
Born 13 May 1588
Aarhus
Died 31 August 1654
Copenhagen
Occupation physician, antiquary
Spouse(s) Dorothea Fincke

Ole Worm (13 May 1588 – 31 August 1654), who often went by the Latinized form of his name Olaus Wormius, was a Danish physician and antiquary.

Life

Worm was the son of Willum Worm who served as the mayor of Aarhus, and was made a rich man by an inheritance from his father. Ole Worm's grandfather Johan Worm, a magistrate in Aarhus, was a Lutheran who had fled from Arnhem in Gelderland while it was under Catholic rule.[1]

Worm married Dorothea Fincke, the daughter of a friend and colleague, Thomas Fincke. Fincke was a Danish mathematician and physicist, who invented the terms 'tangent' and 'secant' and who taught at the University of Copenhagen for more than 60 years.[2]

Ole Worm was something of a perpetual student: after attending the grammar school of Aarhus, he continued his education at the University of Marburg studying theology in 1605.[1] He received his doctor of medicine degree from the University of Basel in 1611, and received a master of arts degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1617. The rest of his academic career was spent in Copenhagen, where he taught Latin, Greek, physics, and medicine. He was personal physician to King Christian IV of Denmark. Somewhat remarkable for a physician of the time, he remained in the city of Copenhagen to minister to the sick during an epidemic of the Black Death.

Scientific and cultural significance

Ole Worm and Dorothea Worm, neé Fincke

In medicine, Worm's chief contributions were in embryology. The Wormian bones (small bones that fill gaps in the cranial sutures) are named after him.

Worm is known to have been a collector of early literature in the Scandinavian languages. He also wrote a number of treatises on runestones and collected texts that were written in runic. Worm received letters of introduction to the bishops of Denmark and Norway from the King of Denmark due to the king's interest and approval.

Worm's illustration of the Runamo inscription, wherein he asserted he could read the name Lund; the "inscription" later was found to be natural formations in the rock

In 1626 Worm published his Fasti Danici, or "Danish Chronology," containing the results of his researches into runic lore; and in 1636 Runir seu Danica literatura antiquissima, "Runes: the oldest Danish literature," a compilation of transcribed runic texts. In 1643 his Danicorum Monumentorum, "Danish Monuments" was published. The first written study of runestones, it is also one of the only surviving sources for depictions of numerous runestones and inscriptions from Denmark, some of which are now lost.

"Musei Wormiani Historia," the frontispiece from the Museum Wormianum depicting Wormius' cabinet of curiosities

As a natural philosopher, Worm assembled a great collection of curiosities, which ranged from native artifacts collected from the New World, to taxidermed animals, to fossils, on which he speculated greatly. Worm compiled engravings of his collection, along with his speculations about their meaning, into a catalog of his Museum Wormianum, published after his death in 1654.[3]

Only known illustration of a great auk drawn from life, Ole Worm's pet, received from the Faroe Islands, 1655

An illustration of his pet bird, a great auk, survives as the only known illustration of a live member of this species that has become extinct.

As a scientist, Worm straddled the line between modern and pre-modern. As an example, in a very modern, empirical mode, Worm determined in 1638 that the unicorn did not exist and that purported unicorn horns simply were from the narwhal. At the same time, however, he then wondered if the anti-poison properties associated with a unicorn's horn still held true, and undertook experiments in poisoning pets and then serving them ground up narwhal horn (his poisoning must have been relatively mild because he reported that they did recover).

Other empirical investigations he conducted included providing convincing evidence that lemmings were rodents and not, as some thought, spontaneously generated by the air (Worm 1655, p. 327), and also by providing the first detailed drawing of a bird-of-paradise proving that they did, despite much popular speculation to the opposite, indeed have feet like regular birds. Worm's primary use of his natural history collection was for the purpose of pedagogy.

The early twentieth century horror author H. P. Lovecraft mentions Ole Worm (using his Latinized name "Olaus Wormius") as one of the translators of the fictional book Al Azif (commonly known as the Necronomicon). Horror writer Anders Fager has elaborated this myth in several of his tales.

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 C.J. Duffin, R.T.J. Moody, C. Gardner-Thorpe (10 Dec 2013). A History of Geology and Medicine. Geological Society of London. p. 512.
  2. ↑ Chabrán, Rafael. "Dr. Francisco Hernández and Denmark:The Presence of The Mexican Treasury in the Work of Ole Worm. An Introduction" (PDF). Spanish and Portuguese Department at the University of Colorado. p. 173.
  3. ↑ Sabrina Richards (1 Apr 2012). "The World in a Cabinet, 1600s". www.the-scientist.com. Retrieved 1 Mar 2015.
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