Melchisédech Thévenot

Thévenot studied astronomy, physics, medicine, and magnetism, and demonstrated in the 1660s the possibility that atmospheric pulsations had something to do with human and animal respiration.

Thévenot can be credited in sponsoring a scientific study that contributed to the discovery of the nature and mechanism of fertilization both in humans and in animals in general.

In April 1665, he wrote to his friend Christiaan Huygens (1629–95), a Dutch mathematician and astronomer: We took the opportunity provided by the cold of recent months and applied ourselves to dissections and to investigating the generation of animals (Thévenot 1665).

Within a year of this date, the inventor circulated details of his invention to others, including Robert Hooke in London and Vincenzo Viviani in Florence.

[5] This apparent division may have been fortuitous, as on other Dutch maps of this period Terra Australis or t'Zuid Landt ("the South Land") appears with the name, Hollandia Nova as an alternative name for the whole country.

[10] The meridian staff dividing Nova Hollandia from Terre Australe on Thévenot's map fell along the meridian that represented the western limit of Spain's imperial claim in the South Pacific arising from the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 and act of possession of the South Land made by Pedro Fernández de Quirós in 1606.

This western limit of Spain's claim is shown on the 1761 map of the Spanish Empire by Vicente de Memije, Aspecto Symbolico del Mundo Hispanico.

One inscription said: It is impossible to conceive a Country that promises fairer from its Situation than this of TERRA AUSTRALIS, no longer incognita, as this Map demonstrates, but the Southern Continent Discovered.

It lies precisely in the richest climates of the World... and therefore whoever perfectly discovers and settles it will become infalliably possessed of Territories as Rich, as fruitful, and as capable of Improvement, as any that have hitherto been found out, either in the East Indies or the West.