Life stories of some half-forgotten pioneers of modern research. Contents: Jerome Cardan; Andreas Vesalius; Michael Servetus; macrocosm and microcosm, new heavens of Kepler and Copernicus, insect world of Swammerdam; Kaspar Friedrich Wolff; Jean de Lamarck; Julius Robert Mayer; Jackson and Morton; Max Joseph von Pettenkofer; Harvey Cushing.