Jan van Horne through the correspondence of Guy Patin: discovering the ducts of chyle

What remains available from de correspondence of the Parisian physician Guy Patin (1601-1672), promoted royal lecturer of anatomy, surgery and botany at the Collège de France in 1655, amounts to 1,608 letters. Between 1656 and 1669, he has written seven of those (in Latin) to Jan van Horne (1621-1670), professor of anatomy in Leiden. None of the latter’s answers have been found so far. These seven letters, as well as the 37 mentions of van Horne elsewhere in this corpus convey precious information about his relationship with his French colleagues. Van Horne deeply admired Jean Riolan the Young (1580-1657); but he had a sour quarrel with Jean Pecquet (1622-1674), who had described the ducts of chyle in 1647, and published his discovery in his Experimenta nova anatomica… [New anatomical experiments…] (Paris, 1651); van Horne shamelessly claimed priority for this breakthrough in his Novus ductus chyliferus. Nunc primum delineatus, descriptus et eruditorum examini expositus… [New chyliferous duct. For the first time discovered, described and submitted to the examination of the scientists…] (Leiden, 1652). Posterity’s verdict has favoured Pecquet, whose undisputable authorship tarnished the posthumous merits of his competitor.