

MANUAL 



OP 



HUMAN MICROSCOPIC ANATOMY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



§ i. The doctrine of the elementary structure of plants and 

 animals is the fruit of the last two centuries, and commences with 

 Marcellus Malpighi (1628 — 1694), and Anton van Leeuwenhoek 

 (1632 — 1723), at the period when, for the first time, high magni- 

 fying glasses, although still in a simple form, were put into the 

 hands of investigators. The ancients and the observers of the 

 middle ages knew nothing of the ultimate structural consti- 

 tuents of organism ; for, although Aristotle and Galen speak of 

 similar and dissimilar parts [partes similares et dissimilares) and 

 Fallopia defines, still more accurately the idea of " tissues," and even 

 attempts a classification of them [Tractatus quinque de partibas 

 similaribus in Oper. Tom. ii. Francof, 1600), still the intimate 

 conditions remained entirely concealed from these observers. Now, 

 however brilliant the first steps of the young science were in the 

 hands of the above-mentioned philosophers, and of Ruysch, Sivam- 

 iin rdam and others, vet these men were not able to furnish it with 

 a secure position, seeing that, 011 the one hand, investigators were 

 still far too little acquainted with microscopical research, to be 

 able to strive after the proper goal, and, on the other, were too 

 much occupied with the cultivation of other branches, such as ordi- 

 nary anatomy, physiology, embryology, and comparative anatomy. 

 Thus it happened, that some isolated, and in part important, phe- 

 nomena excepted, Histology made no material progress in the 

 whole eighteenth century, and did not extend beyond an uncon- 

 nected collection of individual observations (see Fontana, Murjs, 

 Lieberkuhn, Heicson, Prochaska). It was first in 1801, that it was 

 destined to take up its proper position among the anatomical sciences 



B 



