Microscope
Place where the object is located
Museum for the History of Medicine, School of Medicine, A.U.Th., Thessaloniki, Greece
Story of the object
This object is a Spencer microscope that was used in the Biochemical and Microbiological lab of the Hospital for Infectious Diseases of Thessaloniki. According to the serial number, it was shipped in 1945.
EARLY USE
Galileus (1564-1642), the famous astronomist, conceived the idea of using the telescope as a microscope for examining small bugs but the small vision spectrum probably set him away from working more on that idea. One of the first microscopes was created by Robert Hooke, secretary of the Royal Society in 1665. Numerous historians consider the Dutch optician Zacharias Janssen as the inventor of the microscope but the person who perfected the microscope was Antonj Van Leeuwenhoek. He created more than 400 lenses, with up to 300x magnification, the combination of which resulted in more than 250 microscopes. He was a self-taught amateur without thus being able to connect what he observed with anything scientific. He studied the red cells of invertebrates and vertebrates, the vessel tunics, the fine textures of teeth, the muscle fibers, the trichoids of the legs and the mesentery of frogs, the spermatozoa and various bacteria extracted from teeth of water drops. Since 1673, he sent papers to the Royal Society of London (more than 200) where he described accurately his microscopic findings, without thought revealing the structure of his microscopes, which nevertheless passed on to the Society postmortem.
RELATIVE LITERATURE
• The History Of The Microscope. (1890). The British Medical Journal, 2(1559), 1145-1145.
• HADEN R. (1942). GALILEO AND THE COMPOUND MICROSCOPE. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 12(2),
242-247.
• Richards O. (1949). The History of the Microscope: Selected References and Notes I and II. Transactions of
the American Microscopical Society, 68(1), 55-57.
• West JB. Robert Hooke: early respiratory physiologist, polymath, and mechanical genius. Physiology
(Bethesda). 2014 Jul;29(4):222-33.
• Kriss TC, Kriss VM. History of the operating microscope: from magnifying glass to microneurosurgery.
Neurosurgery. 1998 Apr;42(4):899-907; discussion 907-8.
EARLY USE
Galileus (1564-1642), the famous astronomist, conceived the idea of using the telescope as a microscope for examining small bugs but the small vision spectrum probably set him away from working more on that idea. One of the first microscopes was created by Robert Hooke, secretary of the Royal Society in 1665. Numerous historians consider the Dutch optician Zacharias Janssen as the inventor of the microscope but the person who perfected the microscope was Antonj Van Leeuwenhoek. He created more than 400 lenses, with up to 300x magnification, the combination of which resulted in more than 250 microscopes. He was a self-taught amateur without thus being able to connect what he observed with anything scientific. He studied the red cells of invertebrates and vertebrates, the vessel tunics, the fine textures of teeth, the muscle fibers, the trichoids of the legs and the mesentery of frogs, the spermatozoa and various bacteria extracted from teeth of water drops. Since 1673, he sent papers to the Royal Society of London (more than 200) where he described accurately his microscopic findings, without thought revealing the structure of his microscopes, which nevertheless passed on to the Society postmortem.
RELATIVE LITERATURE
• The History Of The Microscope. (1890). The British Medical Journal, 2(1559), 1145-1145.
• HADEN R. (1942). GALILEO AND THE COMPOUND MICROSCOPE. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 12(2),
242-247.
• Richards O. (1949). The History of the Microscope: Selected References and Notes I and II. Transactions of
the American Microscopical Society, 68(1), 55-57.
• West JB. Robert Hooke: early respiratory physiologist, polymath, and mechanical genius. Physiology
(Bethesda). 2014 Jul;29(4):222-33.
• Kriss TC, Kriss VM. History of the operating microscope: from magnifying glass to microneurosurgery.
Neurosurgery. 1998 Apr;42(4):899-907; discussion 907-8.
Unit of the Educational Material connected (5 - 1)
Label
Item 0145. Serial number 221476. The item was donated to the Museum for the History of Medicine, AUTH, by the Hospital for Infectious Diseases of Thessaloniki, Greece when it was shut down, in 2018.
