Wrote Letter 43 of 1685-01-05 (AB 82) to Members of the Royal Society

Date:

January 5, 1685

Standard reference information

Cole's number:

AB/CL number:

AB/CL volume:

Text of the letter in the original Dutch and in English translation from Alle de Brieven / The Collected Letters at the DBNL - De Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren.

The original manuscript on twenty-one quarto pages, written and signed by Leeuwenhoek, is preserved at the Royal Society (MS. 1902. L 1. 73).

Leeuwenhoek's summary

From the three editions of Onsigtbare verborgentheden and translated into Latin for all of the editions, some re-titled, of Anatomia Seu Interiora Rerum.

Van 't Sout en Aaltjens in de Wijn-edik. Dat deselve door Kreeften-oogen of krijt daar in te doen, van figuur veranderen. De sout-figuuren in den Edik en gaan tot ons bloed niet over; maar stremmen in de maag en darmen. Den edik niet schadelijk. Kleynheyd van de sout- en water-deelen. Sout van verscheyde Wijnen, en redenen van der selver smaak. Waarom de scharpe sout-deelen van de Wijn niet tot ons bloed over gaan. Kreeften-oogen of krijt in de Wijn leggende, doet de sout-deelen in de Wijn van figuur veranderen. Rijnsche or Fransche Wijn veroorsaakt geen Jicht.

Of the salt and little eels in wine vinegar. That the same done there by crab's eyes or chalk on changing shape. The salt particles in the vinegar do not cross over into our blood; but congeal in the stomach and guts. The vinegar not harmful. Smallness of the salt and water particles. Salt of various wines, and the reasons for the taste of the same. Whay the sharp salt particles of wine do not cross over into our blood. Crab's eyes or chalk lying in wine, changes the shape of the salt particles in the wine. Rhine or French wine does not cause gout.

Reception in London

Almost a month after it was written, this letter was read at a regular weekly meeting of the Royal Society on January 21/31 (O.S./N.S.; Birch's History, vol. IV p. 358, 361):

There was read the former part of a letter of Mr. Leeuwenhoeck to the Society dated at Delft January 5, 1685 N. S. It contained the figures and descriptions of feveral salts found in vinegar and in a sort of French wine called vin de demoiselle; the figure of an eel in vinegar; the figure of the salts found in vinegar mixt with crabs eyes and chalk.

A week later, they finished reading the letter:

The latter part of Mr. Leeuwenhoeck's letter to the Society of January 5, 1685 was read, concerning the various figures of salt in Mofelle wine, Sherry, Hockamore, Pincow, Garence, Goteau, Toufain, Citereuse, and high Country wines: as also the figures resulting from the mixtures of tartar, crabs eyes, or chalk with several wines; the difference of the figures of the salts found in wines from the salts found in chalk stones bred by the gout, &c.

Dr. Lister remarked, that Mr. Leeuwenhoeck gave a new explication of the effects of chalk on vinegar, viz. by making the salts go together, which were before dispersed: and that some salts were made flexible, which he had never seen.

Specimens and methods

"Let me but drink a pint of wine in the evening, and it produces a fever in me at night."

In the text, Leeuwenhoek gave some details about his daily life. Some of the wine that he examined in this letter came from his own cellar.

My wine vinegar (a cask of which, enough for a whole year, I lay down for my household) and which had been in my cellar for about three months) had become so sour as far to exceed in acidity my previous stock.

It did not take much wine to set off a reaction. According to Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters, Leeuwenhoek "pint" was 0.6 liters.

The vinegar which I take in my food almost daily has never caused me any discomfort; nor have I ever noticed any injurious effects from it upon my body. Contrarily, let me but drink a pint - that is 1¼ lbs. - of wine in the evening, and it produces a fever in me at night (if, that is, a strong, or more than ordinarily rapid heart-beat or pulse may be called a fever), especially if the wine is sweet and also heavy.

Whether his interest in wine pre-dated his 1679 appointment as Delft's wine gauger (wijnroeier), we do not know.

I have moreover been considering wine and have begun to examine my own wine again, which is an exceptionally fine one and very pure to the taste. Because of its excellent taste, it has been given the new name of Vin de Damoiselle in France, although it is merely an Orliens wine from the River of Nantes.

Based on his observations, he had learned some things about digestion.

This hypothesis of the presence of particles of salt in every globule of blood may seem strange to some.

The explanation we suggest is that bread and water not only sustain life, but that these foods cause man and beast to grow, and although it may be said that all the food we consume is mixed with or contained in water, the latter is not able, or does not contain enough nourishing matter, to keep us alive. We have therefore to recognize that the growth or maintenance of our bodies depends mainly on the consumption of bread.

This being so, we can infer, not only that every grain of wheat contains those nutrients from which flesh, bone, fat, hair, nails, etc, are built up, but that every constituent minute globule (of which there are many millions) of which a single grain of wheat consists has all those substances within it of which our bodies are composed.

Response to other researchers

In this letter, Leeuwenhoek responded to several authorities. Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters notes that "a certain Author" was probably Heydentryck Overkamp in his 1681 book Nieuwe beginselen tot de genees- en heelkonst. In Letter 37 of January 22, 1683, Leeuwenhoek had responded to his ideas about fermentation in the blood.

If the recent confident asseverations of a certain Author respecting the particles of water come to the notice of the average reader, the latter cannot but picture to himself the eels of which the water is said to consist as being very large. Whereas I believe that if many people were told that these little water eels are so minute as to be smaller even than the thousand millionth part of a coarse grain of sand they would find it hard to comprehend.

Many of Leeuwenhoek's observations were framed by Descartes' ideas about the composition of matter. However, as early as this letter in 1685, he gave more weight to his observations. He was polite and respectful about it, but he disagreed.

I am well aware that the suggestion cited, namely that water is composed of little eels, is not an original proposition put forth by recent or the latest authors, but that these have adopted it from that famous man Renatus Descartes, so that, in calling the statements into question, I am opposing not them but this same celebrated man Descartes. This I admit but, seeing that it is open to every one of us to express his opinion, especially on matters the real truth of which is hidden from us, I am taking the liberty of expressing my views as to the minuteness and constitution of the particles of water, confident that my temerity in thus contradicting the aforesaid illustrious man will not give offense.

The public and their opinions

"Speculations ... are nothing but brain-work."

At the end of the letter, Leeuwenhoek returned to this problem, the core of the Enlightenment, with a comment that would be echoed six years later by Leibniz:

Although I am well aware that your Honors are better served by an accurate observation than with a whole volume of speculations since these are nothing but brain-work, I have nevertheless again interspersed in this missive some of my reflections, because it seems to me that, if I am qualified to judge at all, I am in a better position to draw conclusions from my observations than would be others who had never heard of such matter, let alone seen it.

In a 1691 letter to Christiaan Huygens, Leibniz wrote:

I am more fond of a Leeuwenhoek who tells me what he observes, than of a Cartesian who tells me what he thinks.

Calculations

How large is a particle of salt?

As always, Leeuwenhoek shared the commonsense incredulity about the size of the numbers his calculations produced.

These minute particles of salt cannot pass from our stomachs or intestines into our blood and other parts of our bodies, unless these minute particles of salt are further divisible into an inconceivable number of infinitesimal particles. I imagine, indeed, that were I to perceive a particle of salt no bigger than 1/1000000000 of a coarse grain of sand and this again were divided into a thousand million particles, each particle would nonetheless be an exact square or quadratic of salt.

If that ten-digit number were not enough, Leeuwenhoek zoomed in on that tiny speck, a gave it life.

Strange as this may seem to many, they would do well to remember the minute organisms actually living in ordinary water and our excrements, no larger than 1/1000000000 of a coarse grain of sand, that they have a skin and who knows whether the skin may carry scales and that the organism must have feet or fins to enable it to swim; moreover, it must have a mouth, intestines, arteries, muscles, nerves, in fact all the organs which a large animal possesses.

Figures

The original drawings are lost. The way Leeuwenhoek discussed them in the text, he saw them as 76 figures on 11 numbered plates. Here and in Alle de Brieven / Collected Letters, they are treated as 11 figures placed near the text where Leeuwenhoek discussed them. The scans on the sidebars came from Opera Omnia, the fourth edition of Arcana Naturae Microscopiorum.

In the text, Leeuwenhoek did not say who drew Nos. 2, 6, 8, 10, and 11. He noted that he drew Nos. 3, 4, 7, and 9. Of them, No. 4 involved the greatest artistic skill. Leeuwenhoek wrote of those figures specifically:

I shall draw these larger than I actually see them, the better to show how they are formed.

He wrote about No. 9:

There were also several oblong four-sided salt-particles which were likewise very thin and transparent, also very minute, though drawn fairly large in fig. H, the reason being that I was unable to draw them to the same scale, because the microscope with which I could see the figures represented by A, B, C, D, E and G very distinctly was not powerful enough to reveal those represented by F and H.

He had at least part of No. 1 and Nos. 2 and 5 drawn for him. On No. 1, the upper two rows, Figs. A through F, look as though they were drawn by someone with less skill than the four figures on the lower two rows. Leeuwenhoek did not say who drew the upper figures; it may well have been himself. Of the lower figures, he wrote:

I had a drawing made of several of these, with the excavation in full view as in fig. G; also some seen partly from aside, and showing. part of the excavation as in fig. H. I also had a full-grown living eel, among the many present in this vinegar, drawn as will be seen in fig LM; likewise a full-grown specimen which I had killed so that the draughtsman should see it more distinctly (see fig. NO).

He had two reasons to show that figure.

My object being to illustrate the minuteness of the salt particles in the vinegar by comparison with the size of the little eels (though it should be borne in mind that both the particles and the eels were drawn from a view of them through an ordinary microscope, whereas I have detected very much smaller particles of salt in the vinegar which were invisible through the said microscope).

Another reason was that many people firmly imagine that the perception of the acidity of vinegar is due to the fact that the eels thrust their sharp tails into our tongues, in which they are in error.

He wrote about No. 5:

Of these I first made a rough sketch and then showed them, through a microscope, to a good draughtsman (goet Teekenaar), whose drawing of them is given here as No. 5, fig. A.

Publication history

Related sources, especially Philosophical Transactions, and first editions only of Leeuwenhoek's volumes of letters. For later editions see Related events under Learn more.

Year	Author	Title
1665	various	Philosophical Transactions
1681	Overkamp, H.	Nieuwe beginselen tot de genees- en heelkonst
1682 - 1731	Mencke, O. (ed.)	Acta eruditorum
1685	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	An Extract of a Letter from Mr. Anthony Leewenhoeck F. of the R. S. to a S. of the R. Society, Dated from Delf, January 5th. 1685
1685	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Anatomia et Contemplatio
1685	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Onsigtbare verborgentheden
1687	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Anatomia Seu Interiora Rerum
1957	Leeuwenhoek, A. van	Alle de Brieven. The Collected Letters. Volume 5

Other publications:

On April 10, 1685, an extract from this letter was published in Philosophical Transactions, vol 15 no. 170. Later that year, a short extract was published in Acta eruditorum, vol. 4 pp. 534 along with two of the eleven figures.

Notes

Leeuwenhoek used two words for vinegar, the common azijn and the now-obsolete edik.

Learn more

The adventures of Letters 38, 42, and 43

Period 2 - 1679-1686

Structure of the letters in Period 2

1685: Being ignorant of all other men's thoughts

Related people:

Members of the Royal Society

Related events:

Date	Event
January 1, 1685	Published Onsigtbare Verborgentheden (Invisible Mysteries), Letters 38, 42, 43
January 1, 1685	Published Anatomia et Contemplatio (Anatomy and Contemplation), Letters 43, 42, 38
January 31, 1685	The Royal Society read the former part of Letter 43 of 1685-01-05 about salts in vinegar and wine
February 7, 1685	The Royal Society read and discussed the latter part of Letter 43 of 1685-01-05
April 20, 1685	At age 52, his 25th letter in Philosophical Transactions
January 1, 1687	Published Anatomia Seu Interiora Rerum (Interior Anatomy), 19 Letters from 28 - 52
January 1, 1687	Published Anatomia Seu Interiora Rerum (Interior Anatomy), Letters 43, 42, 38
January 1, 1691	Published Onsigtbare Verborgentheden (Invisible Mysteries), Letters 38, 42, 43 (2nd)
March 2, 1691	Gottfried Leibniz wrote to Christiaan Huygens praising Leeuwenhoek
January 1, 1696	Published Arcana Naturae Microscopiorum (Nature's Mcroscopical Mysteries), 19 Letters from 28 - 52 (2nd)
January 1, 1698	Published Onsigtbare Verborgentheden (Invisible Mysteries), Letters 38, 42, 43 (3rd)
January 1, 1708	Published Arcana Naturae Microscopiorum (Nature's Mcroscopical Mysteries), 19 Letters from 28 - 52 (3rd)
January 1, 1722	Published Opera Omnia, seu Arcana Naturae Microscopiorum (The Works, or Nature's Microscopical Mysteries), 25 Letters from 28 - 60 (4th)

Top Menu - main site navigation

Letter 43 Figures

Wrote Letter 43 of 1685-01-05 (AB 82) to Members of the Royal Society

"Let me but drink a pint of wine in the evening, and it produces a fever in me at night."

"Speculations ... are nothing but brain-work."

How large is a particle of salt?

Figures

Letters

Letter written to