John Quekett, Victorian Microscopist

The microscope was at the forefront of medical science in the 19th century. However, the advances made in the instrument would have come to nothing without the techniques for preparing specimens for viewing. John Quekett was the most capable of those who developed these techniques, and he was the greatest communicator of them. In his short life he sliced, stained and injected everything and anything that came his way, from fossil pterodactyl bones to human skin nailed to church doors.