24 THE MICROSCOPE. 



;§iclct:ti0ns. 



"There is Not Much In It." — This expression, wliich we 

 have adopted for a heading, was recently made by a physician who 

 does not reside more than a hundred miles from Cincinnati, when the 

 microscope was mentioned to him by a layman. Of course, our read- 

 ers will suppose he must be a very ignorant man and of no standing 

 in the profession. But we will assure them that they are mistaken. 

 On the contrary, he considers himself, and is considered, both by the 

 community and the most of his medical brethren as eminent in his 

 profession, and is of high standing socially. Although he has not a 

 college education, yet he is regarded as an intelligent man, and has 

 written not a little for publication. We believe, too, that he has been 

 called upon to make addresses away from home. 



Such an expression from such an individual is remarkable, and 

 we scarcely know how to account for it. If he was a grossly 

 ignorant man, of but little modesty, and full of ignorant self-assur- 

 ance, we would unhesitatingly ascribe it to his ignorance ; for it is 

 difificult to imagine that there can be one of any other class that 

 would be disposed to depreciate the value of the microscope. Has 

 there been any other instrument that has accomplished more, if as 

 much for science ? Certainly medicine is more indebted to it than 

 to any other. It has done so much here, that we scarcely know how 

 to begin to tell what it has done. In fact, it really seems to us, at a 

 glance, to have done everything. Without it there could have been 

 no science in medicine at all. " To begin with the beginning " — 

 histology. Without the microscope there could be no histology — 

 /. e.^ such a branch of knowledge. The foundation of all structure 

 is the cell, and its increase is the increase or multiplication of cells. 

 But we could not have known of the existence of such a body as a 

 cell unless the microscope had revealed it. And it also revealed how 

 cells are multiplied by division ; tissues, structures, and 

 organs thus created. But we have not time nor space to recount 

 from the beginning, in regular order, how medicine has been built 

 up into a science and art by means of the microscope. We will 

 only mention at random, what we would not have known anything 

 about if it had not been for the revelations of the microscope, and 



