Hoax Humanculus first animal IVF frog

"The homonculus According to Cole (1930), the first author to publish a representation of a preformed fetus in the sperm head was Hartsoeker (1694) in his Essay de Dioptrique. However, Hartsoeker did not pretend that he had actually seen the homunculus, in the text he stated: if we could see the little animal through the skin which hides it we might possibly see it as it is represented in the illustration The homunculus gained credibility with the report by Dalenpatius (1699), wherein he stated explicitly that he had observed a minute human form inside the sperm head. Unusually, his letter was published simultaneously in Amsterdam, London and Edinburgh, which Cole (1930) considered was indicative of being ‘an organized and serious attempt to deceive the public’. The real identity of Dalenpatius was eventually revealed by Jean Astruc in 1740 in his book on venereal diseases. Astruc had been a friend of a man by the name of Plantade who was ‘given to jesting’ and had composed the letter in order to amuse himself, and that the assumed name was an anagram of Plantadeius which was the Latinized form of his real name (see Cole, 1930). Unfortunately, many bona fide natural philosophers believed his report of the homunculus, which was then discussed seriously in various publications. Thus the homunculus acquired a degree of currency in the literature before the hoax was eventually uncovered. In 1749 George-Louis de Buffon referred to Dalenpatius observations as: repugnant to the repeated experience and observation of all those who have hitherto made enquiries into this subject. It is quite possible that Plantade was satirizing the beliefs held by some of the preformationists in the animalculist school in an attempt to ridicule and discredit them (Cole, 1930). Whatever his intentions, however, once unleashed the homunculus had various reincarnations over the next 150 years. Thus, as late as 1750, possibly as another hoax, Gautier d’Agoty reported and figured a mal-proportioned fetus in human semen (see Cole, 1930) (Figure 3).

Elucidation of the role of spermatozoa in fertilization The Italian scientist Lazaro Spallanzani (1729–1799) was a very good experimentalist who turned his attention to semen in the 1770s. He examined semen from mammals, fish and amphibians and confirmed the presence of spermatozoa. In experiments with frogs, he was able to show that oocytes would only develop into tadpoles after contact with semen, possibly the first example of IVF."