Description
Autograph Letter Signed, to Dr. Sieveking, thanking him for the Harveian Oration “which I heard with great delight”, discussing the difficulties of pursuing both medical practice and research at the present time, the need for a high income, a doctor “hopes more for guineas than discoveries .. unless he has private funds”. 4 pp. 7 x 4 inches, fine. 61 Grosvenor St., 13 August [1877]. Lionel Smith Beale (1828-1906), doctor and microscopist, taught the use of the microscope in histological and physiological research. His earliest separately published book was The Microscope and its Application to Clinical Medicine {1854], which went through several editions, the fifth and last edition [1880] being called How to Work with the Microscope. Through his microscopic methods, he advanced medical science, particularly relating to nerves and to germs. This work foreshadowed much later work on bacterial disease, anticipating by five years the microbic theory of disease and Pasteur’s doctrine of immunisation.