Dean, C; (2019) Anders Retzius and the dental histologists of the mid-nineteenth century: their contribution to comparative anatomy, histology and anthropology. Journal of the History of Dentistry , 62 (2) pp. 58-97.

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Abstract

Anatomy, comparative anatomy and embryology are fundamental to taxonomy and evolutionary biology. In the mid-nineteenth century many anatomists and zoologists made major contributions to more than one of these disciplines and a surprising number of them were also histologists. Historical accounts of discoveries and developments in anatomy, and in particular dental histology, rarely consider the broader contributions and have tended to be concerned with establishing historical 2 priority about who discovered or described what first. The period 1830 to 1840 saw new developments in light microscopy that enabled studies of histology, cellular pathology and embryology. It also saw a shift away from older ideas such as Naturphilosophie and vitalism towards a more rigorous experimental approach to scientific investigation. Many scientists with diverse research interests were working in parallel on comparative dental histology and were in many cases largely unaware of each other’s work. One researcher, Anders Retzius, travelled widely across Europe, corresponded regularly with his scientific colleagues and, probably unbeknownst to himself in his own lifetime, made a lasting contribution to dental histology. Anders Retzius was a clinician, an anatomist, a comparative anatomist, a histologist and latterly an anthropologist. His life and career spanned the whole of this fast-moving period in the history of anatomy and histology.

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