Word: swammerdam
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...Post-canoe Aristotle thought the baby was formed entirely of menstrual blood, a notion still held by certain moderns, including the Maoris. Not till the 17th Century did Swammerdam show that in conception it was necessary for the male fluid to make contact with the female, a heresy that outraged certain authorities of his time who argued that fertilization by the male was not necessary; not till the 18th Century were male germ cells discovered; only within living memory has the fusion of male and female germ cells been demonstrated...
Bible of the medieval schoolmen was Aristotle; when herbalists began to list plants unmentioned by him, Aristotle's omniscience was first challenged. The first microscopists - Malpighi, Swammerdam, Leeuwenhoek-added their heretical testimony. With Buffon and Reaumur, 18th Century France temporarily captured the blue ribbon of Science. Then Sweden's Linnaeus revolutionized the study of nature by his field-trip to Lapland, gave the world the Linnaean system, the first great attempt to classify plants. The unconsidered Lamarck, with his theory of ''the inheritance of acquired characteristics," was the forerunner of the evolutionists...
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