influence on the young physicians’ method of clinical reasoning and
scientific observation was significant. Behind the Institute is a purpose-
built lecture hall where Rokitansky could lecture and demonstrate, and
where the legendary Viennese surgeon, Theodor Billroth operated (as
depicted in the painting by A. F. Seligmann, displayed in the Galerie
Belvedere in Vienna).
It is astonishing to consider that Rokitansky performed those thousands
of autopsies without a microscope. Like realizing that Copernicus had no
telescope, Rokitansky performed all of those autopsies grossly, with
simple manual examination of the organs and tissues. This severely
limited his ability to take the conceptual leap about what caused disease,
but his significant world leadership is without question. Physicians, like
their astronomy brethren, needed to magnify their objects of interest to see
further and illuminate their minds. It would take a few serendipitous
findings to turn microscopy into a formidable tool, powering the greatest
biologic insight of the Enlightenment.
At the genesis of the Royal Society, the microscope took center stage.
The problem solver, tool builder, and skeptic Robert Hooke published his
groundbreaking Micrographia in 1665, just a few years after the Society
had been founded. The book was the first major publication that included
depictions of microscopic views, shattering assumptions about the unseen
world. Hooke was an expert draftsman, and his drawings fascinated
readers and agitated the imaginations of his fellow geniuses around
Europe. Perhaps most famously, his drawing of a flea, produced in his
book on a massive foldout sheet, showed every minuscule hair and
shingled plate that revealed the flea not to be a tiny, gnat-like, defenseless
creepy-crawly, but instead a body-armored miniature beast with a
carapace. Size matters, but microscopists were poised to reveal that
structure reveals function, and although it would take another two hundred
years to firmly prove the point, it is the tiniest living beings that pose the
greatest threat to mankind. Hooke’s flea was the ideal object to focus
man’s attention to the microscopic world, just big enough to be visible to
our naked eye, but small enough that all detail was out of reach, safely in
its hirsute haven. Through a strange coincidence, just as Hooke was
illuminating the character of the flea, the last great plague was terrorizing
London in 1665; only later would it come to light that the flea was the
marcin
(Marcin)
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