From the time he was admitted to Leyden University in the Netherlands as a precocious 11-year-old, this multitalented scientist and artist found no lack of intellectual pursuits to arouse his boundless curiosity. Pieter Camper made several important contributions in the fields of obstetrics, ophthalmology, orthopedics, comparative anatomy, veterinary medicine, anthropology, and medical illustration.

Pieter Camper was born in the city of Leyden in the Netherlands in 1722. Some of his intellectual influence may have come from his father, a cleric, and his grandfather, a physician. He spent a dozen years there at Leyden University, receiving two doctorates at age 24, one in philosophy and the other in medicine. Camper spent most of his working life as a professor at three Dutch universities: Franeker (in the Dutch province of Friesland), Amsterdam, and Groningen.

Concerned that obstetrical training of the day was inadequate, Camper traveled to England to study midwifery. He later...