Peter Artedi (1705 to 1735) was a Swedish medical man and scientist who collaborated and competed with Carl Linnaeus on the ordering of Mankind's knowledge of nature. Ichthyology - the lore of fishes - and Trichozoology - the lore of the hairy animals - became Artedi's specialities, while botany and ornithology was Linnaeus's special fields. Artedi's premature death by drowning in an Amsterdam canal in the small hours of 28th September meant thas his scientific manuscripts were left unpublished. Linnaeus compensated for this by publishing Artedi's Ichthyologia sive opera omnia de piscibus, 'Ichthyology, or all the works on Fishes', in Leiden, 1738. I have spent some years translating this work of 500 pages, into English as well as Swedish. The Swedish translated was printed and published by the Royal Academy of Forestry and Agriculture of Stockholm: 'Petrus Artedi. Ichthyologia, det vill säga alla verk om fiskarna. I översättning från latinet av Hans Aili och under redaktion av Jakob Christensson samt med bidrag av Sven Kullander och Clas-Ove Strandberg'. The English version was much more ambition, comprising, in collaboration with Prof. Theodore W. Pietsch of Seattle, the whole body of Artedi's works into English, including Latin editions of his minor texts. The first fruit of our shared labours was Catalogus piscium maris Baltici, "Catalogue of the Fishes of the Baltic sea" in Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, Vol. 189, Issue 3, July 2020, pagg. 975 to 997.
The complete work in English appeared in two volumes as 'Hans Aili and Theodore W. Pietsch, Peter Artedi: Reformer of 18th Century Zoology. Studia Latina Stockholmiensia LXIV 2024 and LXV 2025. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. This is an online work in the public domain which can be downloaded by the following links:
Vol. I, The Life and Works of Peter Artedi: https://doi.org/10.16993/bcm
Vol. II, Peter Artedi: Ichthyologia: https://doi.org/10.16993/bcv
Ichthyologia contains a lot of inconsistencies caused by Artedi's untimely death that prevented him from harmonising his work, and I have created a panoptic table containing everything he wrote on the Orders, Genera, and Species of fishes in his three ichthyological works: Ichthyologia, Catalogus piscium maris Baltici, Manuscriptum ichthyologicum (Artedi's contribution to Albertus Seba's Thesaurus, Vol. III). The two minor works are published with Latin editions and English translations in Volume I of Reformer. If the panoptic table was printed in a readable format, it would require the A2 format, but the text of the pdf file can be enlarged locally on screen.
Volume I of Reformer also contains an edition and translation of Manuscriptum ichthyologicum and Idea constitutionum trichozoologia ("Outline of the Principles of the Science of Hairy Animals"), Artedi's only essay into the science of Mammals. There is also be an introduction by myself and a commentary by T.W. Pietsch.