Abstract
AN interesting monograph is just to hand in the shape of a lecture, delivered by Dr. Oscar Hertwig upon the occasion of the congress of German naturalists at Aix la Chapelle (Aachen). The subject is the development of biology in the nineteenth century. Many interesting points, forming landmarks in the progress of biological science, are discussed by the lecturer. The microscope, from the inestimable service it has rendered to morphology, must rank high in the discoveries of the century. Before morphological method had been enriched by it, the cellular hypothesis, which is the foundation stone of all biology, was impossible. Dr. Hertwig accentuates the fact that progress consists, not only in adding facts to our treasury of knowledge, but also in stamping out error, and that some of the biological energy of the nineteenth century has been consumed in annihilating the doctrine of spontaneous generation; it was, indeed, only Pasteur's researches that established irrefutably the dictum Omne vivum e vivo, and much later still did the corollary of this, namely Omnis cellula e cellula, firmly plant itself upon biology, never to be uprooted.
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Scientific Developments of Biology and Medicine . Nature 63, 286–287 (1901). https://doi.org/10.1038/063286b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/063286b0