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Zena Chiara Masud

VICTORIAN CLASSIC ON MICROSCOPY

This decorative antique volume features science history. Illustrated with color plates and black and white prints. Bound in textured boards with gilt motifs on the front and spine of a microscope. Complete work, with upwards of 500 engravings, and coloured illustrations by Tuffen West. 

This book is a comprehensive and richly illustrated guide to the science and use of the microscope, both as a technical instrument and as a window into the unseen world. It serves as a hybrid of instructional manual, scientific treatise, and popular science text, reflecting the Victorian fascination with microscopic life and the broader movement to democratize science through education and accessibility.

Hogg was a surgeon and microscopist, but probably most famous for his very early experiments in photography. The Microscope was immensely successful, selling tens of thousands of copies and going through many editions over a period of sixty years.

The first part of the book is devoted to the history and evolution of the microscope, tracing its development from early optical devices to the refined instruments of the nineteenth century. Hogg details improvements in lens-making, illumination (including mirrors and condensers), and mechanical construction, while also crediting scientific pioneers like Leeuwenhoek, Hooke, and the earliest microscopists. This historical narrative is both technical and cultural, placing the microscope within a broader story of science and industrial progress.

The second section focuses on microscope construction and operation, including guidance for amateur and professional users. Hogg provides thorough explanations of achromatic lenses, mounting techniques, focusing mechanisms, and illumination methods like polarizing and dark-field microscopy. He describes various models available in Victorian England and offers advice on purchasing and maintaining instruments. Diagrams and engravings accompany detailed instructions, making the book a valuable practical resource.

The final and largest part of the book covers applications of microscopy in the natural sciences, particularly biology, pathology, and mineralogy. Hogg describes the microscopic structures of plants, tissues, blood cells, crystals, and parasites, often with theological or philosophical reflections on nature's hidden complexity. This section is filled with poetic marvel at microscopic organisms—particularly infusoria and diatoms—and underscores the microscope’s role in revealing the “invisible wonders” of God’s creation. 

There is an Appendix at the end of the book which covers Microscopical Examination of Drinking Water.

The first edition of this work appeared in 1854, a time in the history of the microscope when the instrument, as an aid to original scientific research, may be said to have been in its infancy. Then certainly it was seldom employed in the laboratory or the medical schools.

BOOK DETAILS

Tenth edition of Hoggs book published in 1883. Publishers’ original Maroon boards, with black decoration and gilt design of The Microscope to the front cover. Gilt lettering, and vignette of a Microscope on spine. xx, 764 p., 9 leaves of plates : ill. (some col.) ; 20 cm x 14cm x 5cm. 

Light wear to boards’ corners, and edges, with minor rubbing to head and tail of spine. Joints holding together well but showing slight wear. Internally; the book is in very good condition. No names or inscriptions. Pages are clean, with occasional light foxing and discoloration on a few pages. All plates are present and still bright.  Overall: VG-.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jabez Hogg (4 April 1817 – 23 April 1899) was an English ophthalmic surgeon and early photographer. A 1843 daguerreotype of him taking someone's photo is the earliest known photo of a photographer at work. Hogg entered as a student at the Hunterian School of Medicine and at Charing Cross Hospital in 1845, though he was not admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of England until 1850. By the advice of George James Guthrie, he devoted himself more particularly to the study of diseases of the eye, and he soon became proficient in the use of the ophthalmoscope, then newly introduced. On 1 February 1855, he was appointed at the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital as personal assistant to Guthrie, the founder of the hospital, and here he was elected to the office of surgeon on 2 February 1871, a position he resigned under an age limit on 7 June 1877. He was also an ophthalmic surgeon at the Hospital for Women and Children in the Waterloo Bridge Road and to the masonic charities.

He was a vice-president of the Medical Society of London in 1851–2, and was elected a fellow of the Linnean Society in 1866. He served as honorary secretary of the Royal Microscopical Society from 1867 to 1872, and he was first president of the Medical Microscopical Society. He was a prominent freemason, both in the craft and arch degrees. He died on 23 April 1899 and is buried in Kensal Green cemetery. He married, in 1841, Mary Ann, a daughter of Captain Davis of the Indian navy, and in 1859 the youngest daughter of Captain James Read.

Hogg was an early adopter of the wet plate process for photography, making a portrait of of himself sat next a microscope, with his children Walter and Nellie, in the early 1850s. Hogg trained in medicine and published scientific works about the microscope, which he used as a tool for his research on the human eye.


Collected works, Illustrated, Natural History, Science - Quantity: 1 - Book

Jabez Hogg; Illustrations by Tuffen West - The Microscope - 1883

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