Through Leeuwenhoek’s Looking Glass by i-heart-histo
Antony van Leeuwenhoek lived three hundred years ago in the Netherlands. He made microscopes that were more powerful than the microscopes that everyone else was using at the time. His microscopes let him see the tiniest living things: sperm, red blood cells, protozoa, and bacteria. They were everywhere, but they had no names until he referred to them as animalcules (animals + molecules).
Looking back, we can see their significance. But everything that he saw, he was the first human ever to see. Before then, in a world as rife with pseudo-scientific speculation as ours, no one even imagined that the microscopic world existed.
He did not begin to report his observations until he was forty years old. However, he lived, and observed, until he was past ninety. All of his reports, beginning in 1673, were informal letters to the editors of the journal of England’s Royal Society. In 1680, in recognition of his achievements, the Royal Society elected him a Fellow. By his death in 1723, with over a hundred letters published by the journal, he was their most-frequent author, and is now known and celebrated throughout Europe among scientists and those interested in science.
He made his discoveries by manufacturing small lenses and observing plant parts, pond water, and slices of animals’ internal organs to collect a cabinet of curiosities. He could not draw well and so he hired an illustrator to prepare drawings of the things he saw, to accompany his written descriptions. Most of his descriptions of microorganisms are instantly recognizable.
Compiled here are only a small selection of the illustrations published in his letters, highlighting the extent of his
1676, April 21 (Ash Tree)
Observations about the vascular system of a thin section of a year-old sprig from an ash tree.
1677, November 19 (Human semen)
In a letter to William Brouncker he described observing in a semen sample a multitude of “animalcules,” less than a millionth the size of a coarse grain of sand and with thin, undulating transparent tails.
1688, 7 September (Tadpoles and fish)
Two tadpoles and an unspecified fish that illustrated a self-published pamphlet Omloop des bloeds (Circulation of Blood) in 1688.
1702, 20 April (Silkmoth parts)
Facets of adult silkmoth eye and a leg claw.
1712, 17 December (Cod muscle)
In a letter to Antoni Heinsius, Raat-Pensionaris van Holland Leunheuk demonstrated a cross-section of dried cod muscle showing how the fibers shrink irregularly and break the membranes between them.
1713, March 25 (Mouse hair)
A mouse hair demonstrated at its thickest and thinnest parts in a letter to Adriaen van Assendelft.
1714, August 21 (Cow flesh)
A dried, shrunken, and re-wetted cross-section of cow flesh and a similar longitudinal section.
A flying creature called a Spek-eeter [lit: ham eater]
1714, November 20 (Mouse flesh)
A flesh fiber from the lowest shank of a mouse near the foot showing three ‘pullers’ (tendons) with spiraling ridges and one puller (right) without them. A multipennate muscle with striations.
1715, March 26 (Sugar pear)
Cross section through the vessels of a sugar pear.
1716, September 28 (Coconut wood)
A small piece of coconut wood showing the joints that draw nearer and farther from each other.
1717, March 2 (Spinal nerve)
A cross section of spinal cord nerve showing five bundled nerves and surrounding fat. Early demonstration of epineurium, perineurium, endoneurium and axons.
1717, March 6 (Pig brain)
Small vessels on the brain of a pig.
1722 (Silkworm trachea and egg)
Published in Opera Omnia. The image shows the trachea (referred to as ‘vessels’) on one side of the head of an unborn silkworm and an egg where the silkworm has bitten through to emerge (G-H).
For more information on Leeuenhoek and his work click here
The 1722 compendium Opera Omnia is available digitally here
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