A 



PRACTICAL TREATISE 



ON THE USE OF 



THE MICEOSCOPE 



HISTORY OF THE MICROSCOPE. 



The term microscope, derived from the two Greek words 

 fiiKpoQ small, and aKOTEta I view, and said to have been 

 first suggested by Demisianus, is applied to an instrmnent 

 which enables us to see distinctly and to investigate objects 

 placed at a short distance from the eye, or to see such 

 minute objects as, without its aid, would be invisible. The 

 early history of this instrument, like that of many others 

 of a scientific nature, is involved in considerable obscurity, so 

 that not even the time of its discovery, nor the name of the 

 discoverer, can be fixed on with any degree of certainty; but 

 as, in its most simple form, the microscope consisted of little 

 or nothing else than the magnifying power or lens, which 

 must of necessity have been made of glass or some other 

 transparent and highly refracting material, its invention may 

 with safety be referred to a period anterior to the Christian 

 aera. Aristophanes, who lived five centuries before Christ, 

 speaks in his Clouds of a burning sphere. Seneca, who was 

 bom during the first year of the Christian aera, and died 

 A.D. 65, writes that small and indistinct objects become larger 

 and more distinct in form when seen through a globe of glass 

 filled with water.* Pliny, who died in a.d. 79, mentions 



* " Literse quamvis minutse et obscurse, per vitream pilam aquft plenam, 

 majores clarioresque cernuntur." — Nat. Qucest, lib. i., cap. 7. 

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