Otago Witness, June 22, 1920 p. 37
Henry Nelson
1828–1867
Henry Nelson was a newly graduated doctor and talented protégé of embryologist Allen Thomson. In June 1851 he produced a paper under Thomson's mentorship that showed sperm enter the egg of the cat parasite Ascaris mystax.
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Nelson argued that sperm material preserves maternal material in the egg, but does not infuse the egg with vital force, which comes solely from the mother, endowed by God.
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Nelson's diagrams show the dynamic interaction of sperm entering the cat egg. He made unequivocal statements that he observed sperm directly enter
the egg.
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Newport was assigned to review Nelson's paper. He had presented his own study of sperm and egg interaction two weeks after Nelson's paper, stating that he could not see sperm penetrate the yolk. I argue that Nelson's paper set up a crisis for Newport's concept of sperm-force.
Illustrations from Nelson, Henry. “The Reproduction of the Ascaris Mystax.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 142 (1852): 563–94. http://www.jstor.org/stable/108551.
Nelson was born in India and studied on the Continent after medical school in Edinburgh. In the 1857 Nelson emigrated
to New Zealand and served as a bush doctor on horseback to the various settler villages until his death.