ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 



Royal Society the famous paper detailing his theories 

 and experiments. Soon after this various continental 

 opticians who had long been working along similar lines 

 took the matter up, and their expositions, in particular 

 that of Amici, introduced the improved compound mi- 

 croscope to the attention of microscopists everywhere. 

 And it required but the most casual trial to convince 

 the experienced observers that a new implement of sci- 

 entific research had been placed in their hands which 

 carried them a long step nearer the observation of the 

 intimate physical processes which lie at the foundation 

 of vital phenomena. For the physiologist this perfec- 

 tion of the compound microscope had the same signifi- 

 cance that the discovery of America had for the fif- 

 teenth-century geographers it promised a veritable 

 world of utterly novel revelations. Nor was the fulfil- 

 ment of that promise long delayed. 



Indeed, so numerous and so important were the dis- 

 coveries now made in the realm of minute anatomy 

 that the rise of histology to the rank of an independent 

 science may be said tc> date from this period. Hither- 

 to', ever since the discovery of magnify ing-glasses, there 

 had been here and there a man, such as Leuwenhoek or 

 Malpighi, gifted with exceptional vision, and perhaps 

 unusually happy in his conjectures, who made impor- 

 tant contributions to the knowledge of the minute 

 structure of organic tissues ; but now of a sudden it be- 

 came possible for the veriest tyro to confirm or refute 

 the laborious observations of these pioneers, while the 

 skilled observer could step easily beyond the barriers of 

 vision that hitherto were quite impassable. And so, 

 naturally enough, the physiologists of the fourth decade 



"3 



