SECTION V. THE MINUTE ANATOMISTS 



EOBEET HOOKE 

 1635-1703 



Micrographia : or some Physiological Descriptions of minute bodies made 

 by magnifying glasses, with observations and inquiries thereupon. By R. 

 Hooke. Fol. Lond. 1665. 



We now reach a point in the history of biology at which 

 the microscope becomes an important instrument of 

 research. Hooke, Malpighi, Grew, Swammerdam and 

 Leeuwenhoek constitute a group of seventeenth-century 

 naturalists who may be called the Minute Anatomists. 

 All of them, either regularly or frequently, investigated 

 minute objects, and their ordinary instrument of research 

 was the microscope. They were not properly histologists, 

 for they studied entire animals and plants as readily as 

 tissues ; they might be zoologists, botanists, or physi- 

 ologists, as well as minute anatomists ; opportunity 

 chiefly directed the course of their work ; they were 

 little given to experiment (Swammerdam is the most 

 notable exception), and were greater as observers than 

 as thinkers. Hooke (in his natural history work ; he 

 was much more than a naturalist) and Leeuwenhoek 

 might be called micrographers; they changed the object 

 continually, turning from a nettle-leaf to the eels in 

 vinegar, or from an insect to a crystal, as the fancy took 



