How to Work with the Microscope

Description:

4th edition. An extensively revised and illustrated practical manual of Victorian microscopy by Lionel Smith Beale (1828-1906), physician, physiologist and microscopist. The work deals with the microscope and its accessories, illumination, drawing and measurement, preparation and mounting of specimens, injection and staining techniques, section cutting, and the microscopical examination of animal and vegetable tissues. The fourth edition contains upwards of 400 illustrations, many drawn on wood by Beale himself.

With the remarkable original mounted albumen photographic frontispiece, comprising twelve photomicrographs by Richard Leach Maddox and printed by the distinguished early photographer William Russell Sedgfield (1826-1902) of Norbiton. Maddox was an important pioneer of photomicrography and later devised the gelatin silver-bromide dry-plate process; his photomicrographs were first used as the frontispiece to the third edition of Beale's work in 1865, among the earliest uses of photomicrography for book illustration in Britain. Sedgfield, himself a prominent early photographer and producer of photographically illustrated books, was responsible for making the mounted albumen print.

Condition

8vo, orig. cloth, spine defective, part missing; front inner hinge slack; contemporary inscription to fly leaf, otherwise contents good.