The history of medical science is intricately linked to the history of microscopy.1 What a ride it has been! The historian Rupert Hall stated, ”scientific biology without any kind of microscope is almost inconceivable.” 2 In fact, while microscopes are inanimate instruments with specific optical dimensions, their design was associated with a wide range of evolving theories in science and correlated with advances of the Renaissance in art, music, engineering, and scientific thought in the 16th and 17th centuries1,3 Even Philosophers wax eloquent about the role of the microscope in understanding reality.3,4 Through the microscopse, natural “magic” became “matters of fact.”5 Ultimately, it was the microscope that launched philosophy into the modern era moving away from human centered theology.6,7

It is generally believed that societal hopes and expectations drive technology, which is necessary to confirm or refute hypotheses.8 Microscopes, however, were not simply invented to prove the theories of the time, rather these instruments drove theories by providing the tool needed to make advances possible. Thus, the availability of the microscope determined to a great extent what scientists thought.1,5 Microscopes also have a symbolic power to laypeople correlating with their clinical utility in permitting physicians to make diagnoses and advance science. They have become the dominant symbol of biomedicine since the 1860s.9