134 PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 



Medical Microscopical Society. 



At the first ordinary meeting of this Society, held at the Eoyal 

 Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital, King "William Street, Strand, on 

 Friday, January 17, at 8 p.m., Jabez Hogg, Esq., President, in the 

 chair, the minutes of the previous meeting were read and confirmed. 

 The certificates of thirty-two gentlemen proposed for membership were 

 read, amongst whom were Drs. Rutherford ; G. C. Wallieh ; W. 

 Mackenzie, C.B., C.S.I. ; T. Tebay ; Duplex; Messrs. Power, T. 

 Smith, T. Harvey Hill, &c. ; after which the President read an intro- 

 ductory address describing the rise and progress of the science of 

 histology. A vote of thanks to the President was passed for his very 

 interesting address, and the meeting was resolved into a conversazione, 

 at which many most valuable and interesting specimens were exhibited 

 by Mr. Jabez Hogg, Dr. U. Pritchard, Mr. J. Needham, Messrs. 

 White, Ackland, Atkinson, Baber, and Groves. Several of the makers, 

 amongst whom were numbered Messrs. Baker, Home and Thornthwaite, 

 How, Pillischer, Eoss, Swift, &c, very kindly assisted by the loan of 

 microscopes, specimens, and lamps. 



President's Address on the Opening of the Medical Microscopical 

 Society of London. 



January 17, 1873. 



The doctrine of the elementary structures, whether in plants or 

 animals, first took its root in men's minds about the latter part of 

 the seventeenth century, when Malphighi and his contemporaries 

 introduced into their anatomical investigations the use of the simple 

 microscope. 



Tbe employment of anything better than a single lens appears to 

 have been almost unknown to the anatomists of the middle ages, for 

 although it has been observed that Aristotle and Galen wrote of 

 partes similares et dissimilares, and that Follopia had some idea of 

 " tissues," it is quite certain that neither of those philosophers 

 possessed more than a faint notion of the intimate condition and 

 connection of the various tissues of the human body. 



The first steps in histological science were cut out by those who 

 followed long after — Leeuwenhoek, Ruysch, Swammerdam, Adams, 

 Hook, &c. ; and even these anatomists were too much absorbed in other 

 pursuits, and in the teaching of anatomy, physiology, and embryology, 

 to find time to assist in the advancement of microscopical physio- 

 logical investigations. Thus it came about, throughout the greater 

 part of the eighteenth century, histology almost stood still, or, at best, 

 found only a few men of science, Lieberkuhn, Fontana, Hewson, &c, 

 contributing towards the knowledge bequeathed to them by their 

 predecessors. It was not, indeed, until the commencement of the 

 present century that any great effort was made to secure a solid and 

 scientific position for the microscope in the teaching of the medical 

 schools. 



