Microscopy Forum

So I was browsing around on the Barnes & Noble website the other day trying to find a copy of  Wilhelm Julius Behrenses' A Guide for the Microscopical Investigation of Vegetable Substances that wasn't a horrible OCR reprint (no luck). Although I did notice they have several dozen digitized versions of older microscopy and histology books available for free, including some of my personal favorites. A quick look and it seems most of them are just pulled off archive.org and re-formatted for the Barnes & Noble nook. Now admittedly most of the information is going to be horribly outdated and will assume a certain access to chemicals that might not be so easy to find these days, but several of the out of copyright texts still have amazing and practical information. Well, thought I'd share:

A couple of my favorites. 

A Guide for the Microscopical Investigation of Vegetable Substances by Wilhelm Julius Behrens (translated to English by same) revised in 1885

Behrens was not only skilled at his work but a very good author besides (even his English translation is quite elegant).  If you've never read it I can not endorse it strongly enough. It's practical, comprehensive, and neglects neither optics nor chemistry, even if the focus lies elsewhere. At the very least it's interesting to see what was being done with microscopes over a hundred years ago and compare it to todays efforts. The PDF version of Behrenses' work doesn't appear to be any worse than my own 2010 reprint, even the images, largely hand drawn, are of an acceptable quality (though a few seem to be missing).

Section-cutting; a practical guide to the preparation and mounting of sections for the microscope by Sylvester Marsh published in 1878

Sylvester Marshes' Section-cutting, has held up pretty well for a technical manual of its age. Microscopes have certainly changed but quality samples can still be prepared the way they were by your great-grandfather. It was written so long ago that what was utilized by professionals then, is now almost entirely within the scope of even the most casual hobbyist now. I particularly enjoy this slim volume because of the explicit direction it provides for preparing a striking range of materials; everything from bone and brain, (how ghoulish) to orange peel and potato. At least read his instructions for the orange peel, it might make you wonder why we ever put children to looking at onions instead.