The development of microscopes has given scientists new insights into the body and disease.
It is not known who invented the first microscope, but Dutch spectacle maker Zacharias Jansen (b. 1585) introduced one of the first compound microscopes (using two lenses) around 1600. It is said that this microscope 20 or 30 times the normal size.
Leeuwenhoek Welcome Collection with Microscope (CC BY)
Microscopic oil painting by Ernst Leeuwenhoek.
Welcome Collection (CC BY)
Image source Leeuwenhoek using a microscope
In the 1660s, another Dutchman, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1723-1632), refined his lens to make a microscope. His simple microscope was like a magnifying glass with a single lens.
However, high-quality lenses can magnify objects up to 200 times.
Leeuwenhoek observed many things he had never seen under a microscope, including animal and plant tissues, human sperm and blood cells, minerals, and fossils.
He submitted his findings to the Royal Society of London. There, Robert Hooke also made an amazing discovery under the microscope.
Hooke published "Micrographs" (1665), a wonderful collection of copper plate images of objects observed with his compound microscope.
Looking at a thin piece of cork, Hooke described what he saw as vision pores:
He was the first to use the term "cell" to describe what later became known as a component of all living things, plants and animals.
Microscopic abnormality
Many researchers refused to use early microscopes because they could not trust what they were seeing. Lens aberrations and impurities cause distortion and observation errors.
While the basic design of the microscope has not changed significantly over the next 200 years, improvements in lens manufacturing (such as the use of purer glass) can help solve problems such as color distortion and reduced image resolution. To add more light and improve the image, mirrors are added to the compound microscope.
However, in the early 1800s, the pioneering French pathologist Xavier Bichat, who conducted extensive studies on tissue samples and organs, still refused to use the microscope.
The two main problems that hinder lens production are image blur (spherical aberration) and color separation (chromatic aberration). Around 1830, Joseph Jackson Lister, in collaboration with musical instrument maker William Talley, built one of the first microscopes to correct both of these shortcomings.
By solving these two major problems, the use of microscopes in science and medicine has expanded rapidly.
Laboratory microscope
Since the 1830s, cells and cell theory have become the focus of medical and biological research due to the central role of microscopes in laboratory science. The researchers were able to describe the body at the microscopic level with more certainty than what they could see.
Between 1838 and 1839, two German scientists, Matthias Schneider (1881-1804) and Theodor Schwann (1810-82) proposed that cells are part of plant and animal life.
Welcome to Microscopic Cell Image Collection (CC BY)
"Schwann's Microscope", 1839.
Welcome Collection (CC BY)
Image source
Medically trained, Schwann suggested that understanding cellular behavior was the key to understanding a healthy and diseased body.
His theory was adopted by another German researcher, Rudolf (1821-1902), who was probably the most influential teacher of pathology in the 1800s.
The microscope was central to Villeopard's work on disease processes, and he encouraged students to "learn to see under the microscope."
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