PREFACE. 



They constitute careful and beautiful contributions to the 

 purposes of science, but they cannot adequately serve to 

 bring the value and charm of microscopic studies home, 

 so to speak, to the firesides of the people. Repeatedly, 

 day after day, new and interesting discoveries, and further 

 amplifications of truth already discerned, have been made, 

 but they have been either scattered in serials, or, more 

 usually, devoted to the pages of class publications ; and 

 thus this most important and attractive study has been, 

 in a great measure, the province of the few only, who have 

 derived from it a rich store of enlightenment and grati- 

 fication : the many not having, however, participated, to 

 any great extent, in the instruction and entertainment 

 which always follow in the train of microscopical studies. 1 



The manifold and various uses and advantages of the 

 Microscope crowd upon us in such profusion, that we can 

 only attempt to enumerate them in the briefest and most 

 rapid manner in these prefatory pages. 



It is not many years since this invaluable instrument 

 was regarded in the light of a costly toy ; it is now the 

 inseparable companion of the man of science. In the 

 medical world, its utility and necessity are fully appre- 

 ciated, even by those who formerly were slow to see its 

 benefits; and knowledge which could not be obtained 

 even by the minutest dissection is acquired readily by the 

 aid of the Microscope, which has become equally as essen- 

 tial to the anatomist and pathologist as the scalpel and 

 bedside observation. The smallest portion of a diseased 

 structure, placed under a Microscope, will tell more in one 

 minute to the experienced eye, than could be ascertained 

 by days of examination of the gross mass of disease in the 

 ordinary method j and microscopic agency, in thus assist- 



(1) At the time this work was written ; scarcely a book of the kind had been 

 published at a price within the reach of the working classes. 



