2 MANUAL OF HISTOLOGY. 



struct/ion of the animal body, of such minuteness that the usual instru- 

 ments of anatomical dissection are insufficient for their discovery and 

 recognition, and we are therefore obliged to look around us for other 

 assistance. On the other hand, a tissue, as such, may be investigated to 

 a, certain extent with the means at the disposal of an earlier epoch, 

 when there is no question as to its further resolution or insight into its 

 ultimate composition. Indeed, we see the rudiments of histology in the 

 first discoveries of a period long gone by. 13ut as these could only be 

 of historic interest when we consider the vast strides that science has 

 since made, we shall pass them over without further comment. 



Fortunately for us, the science of general anatomy at the close of the 

 eighteenth century numbered amongst its students a highly gifted man, 

 through whose genius it underwent an amount of development greatly to 

 be wondered at. when we consider the scanty aids to investigation of 

 that period. 



This man was M. F. X. Bicliat, who died at Paris in the year 1802, 

 at the early age of thirty-one, thus terminating a career memorable in 

 the annals of medicine. Child of a stirring time, urged on by the great 

 and celebrated philosophers of his day, and, we might add, inspired by 

 that spirit of accurate investigation of which science of the present 

 day is so proud, he founded a system of histology by the help of the. 

 anatomical knife, chemical analysis, and of pathological and physiological 

 research, which his immediate successors were unable to improve upon to 

 any considerable extent for lack of newer methods of examination. 



With Bicliat there commenced and reached its zenith an epoch in 

 histological research which may be designated as that of investigation 

 without the microscope as that in which the tissue-elements still remained 

 veiled in obscurity. 



REMARKS. Bichafs essays are to be found in a large work entitled Anatomic 

 gineraU applique a la physiologic ct a la medicine, which appeared in Paris in the 

 year 1801, and was frequently reproduced afterwards. 



2. 



The second epoch of histology may be termed that of microscopical 

 research; as that of penetration down to the elements of the tissues. From 

 this period our science took the name of Microscopical Anatomy, however 

 inappropriate this term may be. Its first crude beginnings are lost in 

 the clouds of a period far remote, in that age of reformative activity to 

 which we owe the vigour of our modern intellectuality. In its scientific 

 development it is the offspring of a maturer age, and the founders of the 

 science of modern histology are many of them still alive. 



Three nationalities contend for the honor of having been the first to 

 discover the microscope this instrument which has enabled us to pene- 

 trate into the regions of "The Minute." These are the English, Dutch, 

 and Italians. There can be but little doubt, however, that the first 

 instrument of the kind was constructed by a Dutch optician of the name 

 of Z. Janssen, about the year 1590 ; and that Drebbel, Galilei, and 

 Fontana, are incorrectly stated to be the discoverers. This much, how- 

 ever, is incoiitestably proved, that many microscopes had been manu- 

 factured before the middle of the seventeenth century, and soon after 

 came into use in scientific research. 



Mar cello Malpighi (1628-1694), and Anton van Leeuwenlwek (1632- 



