ABSTRACT
Rondelet’s enthusiasm for the newly revived sciences of botany, zoology, and anatomy marked his entire career. To the detriment of his private medical practice, he performed an autopsy on his dead infant son. On a trip to the Lowlands and Italy in 1549 as personal physician to Cardinal François Tournon, he became particularly interested in whales and fishes and infected the Italian naturalist, Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), with his passion for ichthyology. Rondelet’s major work, Libri de piscibus marinis in quibus verae piscium effigies expressae sunt (Books on Marine Fish in Which the True Forms of Fish Are Pictured), was published in Lyon in 1554-1555. Following the model of contemporary illustrated herbals, Rondelet emphasized the identification of marine organisms mentioned in classical texts, but he did not hesitate to challenge the authority of Aristotelian zoology on the basis of his own firsthand observations. Rondelet’s correspondents on natural-history matters included Aldrovandi, Conrad Gessner (15161565), Luca Ghini (ca. 1490-1556), and Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566).
