"A host of experienced microscopists": The establishment of histology in nineteenth-century Edinburgh

Edinburgh was the foremost center in Britain for the introduction of micros copic anatomy into medical training. It therefore offers an instructive cas e study of the way in which what was initially an obscure and exotic techno logy eventually became a regular part of medical education. The paper explo res the process by which skills that were originally the preserve of a smal l number of pioneers in histology came to be transmitted to a wider populat ion. It focuses, in particular, on the transition from an authoritarian sty le of pedagogy, best exemplified by the histological teaching of John Hughe s Bennett, to the more collegial styles of interaction between microscopist s that came to be embodied in the Edinburgh Physiological Society.