Biology and its makers : with portraits and other illustrations / by William A. Locy.

  • William Albert Locy
Date:
1926,
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Biology and its makers : with portraits and other illustrations / by William A. Locy. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    35/514 page 3
    CHAPTER I AN OUTLINE OF THE RISE OF BIOLOGY AND OF THE EPOCHS IN ITS HISTORY ‘Truth is the Daughter of Time.” The nineteenth century will be for all time memorable for the great extension of the knowledge of organic nature. It was then that the results of the earlier efforts of mankind to interpret the mysteries of nature began to be fruitful; observers of organic nature began to see more deeply into the province of life, and, above all, began to see how to direct their future studies. It was in that century that the use of the microscope made known the similarity in cellular con¬ struction of all organized beings; that the substance, proto¬ plasm, began to be recognized as the physical basis of life and the seat of all vital activities; then, most contagious diseases were traced to microscopic organisms, and as a con¬ sequence, medicine and surgery were reformed; then the belief in the spontaneous origin of life under present condi¬ tions was given up; and it was in that century that the doctrine of organic evolution gained general acceptance. These and other advances less generally known created an atmosphere in which biology—the great life-science—grew rapidly. In the same period also the remains of ancient life, long since extinct, and for countless ages embedded in the rocks, were brought to light, and their investigation assisted mate¬ rially in understanding the living forms and in tracing their genealogy.
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