16 THE CELL DOCTRINE. 



these observations becomes appropriately the third 

 period. Notwithstanding the imperfect state of in- 

 struments during quite two hundred years from this 

 date, a flood of facts was added to our knowledge of 

 the minute structure of living things. 



Borellus, of Pisa, seems first to have used the mi- 

 croscope in the examination of the higher animal 

 structures, about the year 1656, but his observations 

 were grossly misinterpreted in his attempt to adapt 

 them to the prevailing idea of the day, that diseases 

 were caused by animalculae in the blood and tissues. 

 As a result, he describes pus corpuscles as animalcules, 

 and even says he has seen them delivering their eggs. 



According to Boerhaave, Swammerdam had recog- 

 nized the blood corpuscle in 1658. 



Malpighi,* between 1661 and 1665, had witnessed 

 the circulation of the blood, and had published ob- 

 servations upon the minute structure of the lungs, 

 which he had even compared to a racemose gland,f 

 kidneys, spleen, liver, and membranes of the brain, 

 and with some of these structures his name has 

 become inseparably associated. In 1667, Robert 

 HookeJ pointed out the cellular structure of plants, 

 and Malpighi further elaborated the same subject 

 with considerable accuracy in his " Anatome Planta- 



* Malpighi, Opera Omnia. Lond. : 1686. 



f Fort, Anatomic et Physiologic du Pouinon, considerc comrae 

 organe de Secretion. Paris: 1867, Preface: or a notice of Dr. 

 Fort's book, by the writer, in American Journal of Medical 

 Sciences, October, 1869. 



J Hooke, Rob., Micrographia. Lond.: 1667. 



$ Malpighi, Anatome Plantarum. London: 1670. 



