Johann Gottlieb Walter (1734-1818) and the technical preparation of bones in an anatomical cabinet in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century

This study aims to analyze Johann Gottlieb Walter's biography (1734-1818), a German physician that specialized in human anatomy, who received an award of the Göttingen Royal Academy of Sciences. Here, we describe his technique of preparing bones for educational purposes through the comparison of other widely used techniques. The article also focuses on the great historical, scientific and didactic values of the anatomical preparations. In Europe during the eighteenth century the activity of some anatomists and physiologists, who were dedicated to the realization of anatomical preparations, testified the progress of medicine in the study of the human body, fundamental knowledge for physician training.

The value of archival tissue blocks in understanding breast cancer biology.

Pathological reporting of breast cancer has evolved alongside scientific advances. Such advances have led to recognition of different molecular classes of breast cancer resulting in improved disease management. The aim of this study was to establish whether these advances could be applied to archival breast cancer cases dating from the 1940s to assess historical trends. Important observations included the marked differences in pathological reporting, size of tumour and in ERα expression throughout the decades.

The role played by electron microscopy in advancing our understanding of Toxoplasma gondii and other apicomplexans.

In many ways the history of the discovery of the life cycle of Toxoplasma gondii and the development of biological electron microscopy progressed in parallel through the 1950s and 1960s. Although Toxoplasma was discovered in 1908, it was only in the 1950s that the extent of the infection in humans and domestic animals was realised and work was undertaken to elucidate its life cycle (reviewed elsewhere in this edition). The development of ultrastructural techniques and their application to biological systems including Toxoplasma developed over the same period. This resulted in a synergistic effect with the re-classification of previously unrelated parasites within a single phylum, the Apicomplexa, which was based on the ultrastructural appearances of the infectious stages. This review will describe the central role played by electron microscopy and Toxoplasma in the developments associated with this progress.

[How to measure the structures, or new stereology. I. Sampling and orientation of samples].

This article presents a brief review of newly developed methods of modern stereology for measurement of biostructures, which allow to avoid problems of uncertainty and technical difficulties peculiar to old stereology. In the first part of the review, a brief historical report on the development of new stereological approaches and their practical application to the selection and orientation of samples, is given. In particular, Cavalieri's principle, random systematic isotropic sampling, fractionator, isector, orientator and principle of vertical sections are described. Some details for practical aspects of measurements have been provided.

Abraham Trembley's strategy of generosity and the scope of celebrity in the mid-eighteenth century.

Historians of science have long believed that Abraham Trembley's celebrity and impact were attributable chiefly to the incredible regenerative phenomena demonstrated by the polyp, which he discovered in 1744, and to the new experimental method he devised to investigate them. This essay shows that experimental method alone cannot account for Trembley's success and influence; nor are the marvels of the polyp sufficient to explain its scientific and cultural impact. Experimental method was but one element in a new conception of the laboratory that called for both experimental and para-experimental skills whose public availability depended on a new style of communication. The strategy of generosity that led Trembley to dispatch polyps everywhere enabled experimental naturalist laboratories to spread throughout Europe, and the free circulation of living objects for scientific research led practitioners to establish an experimental field distinct from mechanical physics. Scholars reacted to the marvels of the polyp by strengthening the boundaries between the public and academic spheres and, in consequence, opened a space for new standards in both scientific work and the production of celebrity.