Tag: Robert Hooke
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A note on early microscopes
JMS PearceHull, England Letters, however small and dim, are comparatively large and distinct when seen through a glass globe filled with water.1Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65) The Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Janssen (1585–c. 1632) and his father Hans are thought to have made one of the earliest (c. 1600) compound microscopes, which had…
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Robert Hooke and Micrographia
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Cells in cork tree bark. From Hooke’s Micrographia via the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is perhaps rash to attempt to appraise the work of Robert Hooke (1635–1703), but renewed attention is merited to a great scientist whose contribution to medicine and science has not been adequately acknowledged. Robert Hooke…
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Francis Bacon’s natural philosophy and medicine
JMS Pearce Hull, England Fig 1. Novum Organum Scientiarum, 2nd edition, 1645. EC.B1328.620ib, Houghton Library, Harvard University. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. Lord Bacon was the greatest genius that England, or perhaps any country, ever produced. – Alexander Pope, 1741 The early seventeenth century was a time when natural philosophy, the precursor of modern…
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The beginnings of cell theory: Schleiden, Schwann, and Virchow
JMS Pearce Hull, England Figure 1. Robert Hooke’s pores (cells) of the cork oak. Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0. Every schoolchild is taught in biology about cells and their elemental importance. Students of biological and medical sciences also learn about the Schwann cell sheath that invests nerve fibers. What is less well known is…
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Book review: “All manner of ingenuity and industry”: a bio-bibliography of Dr. Thomas Willis 1621–1675
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Thomas Willis, born four hundred years ago, is still known by students of neuroanatomy today for the eponymous Circle of Willis. Yet most doctors do not know the story of Willis, the seventeenth-century British physician and his remarkable contributions to medical knowledge and literature. This new book, a labor of…
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Book review: The Origins of Modern Science
Arpan K. BanerjeeSolihull, United Kingdom Science and medicine have long been intertwined: many advances in the field of medicine would not have been possible without prior knowledge of fundamental science. It is not surprising, therefore, that a medical historian would also find the history of science fascinating. In this book, Ofer Gal has described the…