Biology and Its Makers / With Portraits and Other Illustrations

by William A. Locy

It is somewhat puzzling to select a man to represent the study of fossil life, one is tempted to name E.D. Cope, whose researches were conceived on the highest plane. Zittel, however, covered the entire field of fossil life, and his Handbook of Palæontology is designated as a mile-post in the development of that science.

Before the Renaissance the works of Aristotle and Galen should be included.

From the view-point suggested, the more notable figures in the development of biology are: Aristotle, Galen, Vesalius, Harvey, Malpighi, Linnæus, Wolff, Cuvier, Bichat, Lamarck, Von Baer, J. Müller, Schwann, Schultze, Darwin, Pasteur, and Cope.

Such a list is, as a matter of course, arbitrary, and can serve no useful purpose except that of bringing into combination in a single group the names of the most illustrious founders of biological science. The individuals mentioned are not all of the same relative rank, and the list should be extended rather than contracted. Schwann, when the entire output of the two is considered, would rank lower as a scientific man than Koelliker, who is not mentioned, but the former must stand in the list on account of his connection with the cell-theory. Virchow, the presumptive founder of pathology, is omitted, as are also investigators like Koch, whose line of activity has been chiefly medical.

Recent Tendencies in Biology. Higher Standards.—In attempting to indicate some of the more evident influences that dominate biological investigation at the present time, nothing more than an enumeration of tendencies with a running commentary is possible. One notes first a wholesome influence in the establishment of higher standards, both of research and of scientific publication. Investigations as a whole have become more intensive and more critical. Much of the work that would have passed muster for publication two decades ago is now regarded by the editors of the best biological periodicals as too general and too superficial. The requisites for the recognition of creditable work being higher, tends to elevate the whole level of biological science.

Improvement in Tools and Methods.—This has come about partly through improvement in the tools and in the methods of the investigators. It can hardly be said, however, that thinking and discernment have been advanced at the same rate as the mechanical helps to research. In becoming more intensive, the investigation of biological problems has lost something in comprehensiveness. That which some of the earlier investigators lacked in technique was compensated for in the breadth of their preliminary training and in their splendid appreciation of the relations of the facts at their disposal.

The great improvement in the mechanical adjustments and in the optical powers of microscopes has made it possible to see more regarding the physical structure and the activities of organisms than ever before. Microtomes of the best workmanship have placed in the hands of histologists the means of making serial sections of remarkable thinness and regularity.

The great development of micro-chemical technique also has had the widest influence in promoting exact researches in biology. Special staining methods, as those of Golgi and Bethe, by means of which the wonderful fabric of the nervous system has been revealed, are illustrations.

The separation by maceration and smear preparation of entire histological elements so that they may be viewed as solids has come to supplement the study of sections. Reconstruction, by carving wax plates of known thickness into the form of magnified sections drawn upon their surfaces to a scale, and then fitting the plates together, has been very helpful in picturing complicated anatomical relations. This method has made it possible to produce permanent wax models of minute structures magnified to any desired degree. Minute dissections, although not yet sufficiently practiced, are nevertheless better than the wax models for making accurate drawings of minute structures as seen in relief.

The injection of the blood-vessels of extremely small embryos has made it possible to study advantageously the circulatory system. The softening of bones by acid after the tissues are already embedded in celloidin has offered a means of investigating the structure of the internal ear by sections, and is widely applicable to other tissues.