Through the Looking Glass
Fig. 1. Microscope slide of diatoms, sponge spicules, butterfly-wing scales, synapta plates, and wheels of chirodota (sea cucumber), probably made by Eduard Thum (1847–1926), sold by Watson and Sons, London, c. 1880. Collection of Howard Lynk. In his popular how-to guide Half Hours with the Microscope, of 1859, the British surgeon and naturalist Edwin Lankester (1814–1874) extolled the virtues of the microscope as a tool through which anyone could gain knowledge of the physical world. “What eyes would be to the man born blind,” he wrote, “the microscope is to the man who has eyes.”1 Christopher Wren (1632–1723), born almost two centuries before Lankester, would surely have agreed. Though much better known as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in central London, the Royal Hospital in Chelsea, and the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Wren played a now all but forgotten but pivotal role in popularizing microscopy. When his drawings of magnified fleas and lice were shown to Charles II in 1661, the king was so intrigued that he asked Wren and the Royal Society to make such magnifications more widely accessible to the public through their publication. Fig. 2. The Microscope by Lexden L. Pocock (1850– 1919). Watercolor on paper, 29 1/2 by 52 inches. Photograph courtesy of Shapiro Auctioneers, Sydney, Australia. Wren was too busy with architectural projects at the time to take on the task, but he convinced his friend and fellow microscopist Robert Hooke to do so. Over the next four years, Hooke illustrated and wrote about objects and organisms he and Wren were able to observe in astonishing new detail. In 1665 the Royal Society published his treatise under the title Micrographia: or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon. This magnificent book, long prized by