A history of biology to about the year 1900; a general introduction to the study of living things.

Introduction -- Part I. The older biology -- I. The rise of ancient science -- Hippocrates (c. 460-c. 370 B.C.) -- Doctrine of the four humours -- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) -- Aristotle's biological works -- Aristotle on the habits of fish -- Handicaps of early naturalists -- Aristotle on octopuses and their allies -- Aristotle on whales, porpoises, and dolphins -- Aristotle on the placental dog-fish ('galeos') -- The Aristotelian bee-master -- Aristotle on the nature of life -- Classification of animals derived from Aristotle -- Theophrastus(c. 380-287 B.C.) and his botanical works -- II. Decline and fall of ancient science -- Foundation of the Alexandrian school (c. 300 B.C.) -- Beginnings of scientific plant illustration (c. 50 B.C.) -- Dioscorides and Pliny (1st century A.D.) -- Galen (A.D. 130-200) -- The dark ages (A.D. 200-1200) -- Thirteenth-century revival of learning and art -- Scholasticism -- Albertus Magnus (1206-80) -- Medieval anatomy -- III. Rebirth of inquiry -- I. Naturalism in art -- Humanism -- The German fathers of botany -- The naturalist commentators -- The encyclopedic naturalists -- The revival of anatomy -- Renaissance art versus modern science -- Vesalius on the 'fabric of the human body' -- Successors of Vesalius -- Harvey (1578-1657) and the circulation of the blood -- Influence of the discovery of the circulation.

Part II. The historical foundations of modern biology -- Iv. On the inductive philosophy and some of its instruments -- The change from medieval to modern thought -- Francis bacon (1561-1639) -- Ren Descartes (1596-1650) -- Early collections of plants and animals -- Early patrons of science -- The first scientific societies -- The advent of scientific journals -- Early museums -- Introduction of the microscope -- Malpighi (1628-94) -- Grew (1641-1712) -- Swammerdam (1637-80) -- Leewuenhoek (1632-1723) -- Hooke (1635-1703) -- Influence of the classical microscopists -- V. Rise of classificatory systems -- Absence of system in early naturalists -- First attempts at formal classification -- What is a genus? What is a species? -- The binomial nomenclature -- Jung (1587-1657) -- Ray (1627-1705) -- Tournefort (1656-1708) -- Linnaeus (1707-78) -- The 'systema naturae' (1735-58) -- The successors of Linnaeus -- Modern systems of classification -- Vi. Rise of comparative method -- 1.comparative studies in the seventeenth century -- Some eighteenth-century conceptions of nature -- Hunter (1728-93) -- The naturphilosophen: Kant (1724-1804), Goethe (1749-1832), and Oken (1779-1851) -- The eclipse of naturphilosophie -- Cuvier (1769-1832) and the principle of correlation of parts -- 'le règne animal' (1817) -- The doctrine of catastrophes -- Owen (1804-92) and palaeontology -- -- VII. Distribution in space and time -- Early biological exploration. Joseph banks (1743- 1820) and Robert brown (1773-1858) -- Pre-evolutionary geological theory -- Darwin (1809-82), the 'beagle' (1831-5), and island life -- Oceanic exploration from the 'beagle' to the 'challenger' -- The 'challenger' expedition (1872-6) and the rise of oceanography -- Distribution of life in the sea -- Distribution of life on land -- Geological succession -- Interrelations of species -- Migration -- -- VIII. Evolution -- -- Buffon (1707-88) and Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802) -- Lamarck (1744-1829) and his successors -- The 'origin of species' and the validity of its argument -- The reception of the doctrine of evolution -- Evolutionary history of living forms -- Application of the doctrine of descent to man -- Coloration and mimicry -- Parasitism, saprophytism, symbiosis.

Part III. Emergence of main themes of modern biology -- IX. Cell and organism -- Emergence of cell doctrine -- Schleiden (1804-81) and plant cells (1838) -- Schwann (1810-82) and animal cells (1839) -- Extension of cell doctrine in plant kingdom -- Protozoa in relation to cell doctrine -- Extension of cell doctrine in animal kingdom -- Nuclear phenomena of cell division -- Structure of protoplasm -- Cellular ageing, new growths, and tissue culture -- Criticism of the cell doctrine -- X. Essentials of vital activity -- Physiology of Descartes and the early mechanist school -- Van Helmont (1577-1644) and the beginnings of chemical physiology -- Plant physiology in the seventeenth century -- Stahl (1660-1734) and the contest between mechanism and vitalism -- Hales (1677-1761) on the physiology of plants and animals -- Haller (1708-77) and the doctrine of irritability -- Hunter as vitalist -- The balance of life -- T. A. Knight (1759-1838) and 'tropisms' -- Liebig (1802-73) and the chemistry of vital activity -- The chlorophyll system -- The nitrogen cycle -- The chemistry of protoplasm -- XI. Relativity of functions -- Johannes Muller (1801-58) and the law of specific nerve energies -- Karl Ludwig (1816-95) and mechanism -- The early French experimental physiologists. Claude Bernard (1813-78) -- Energetics -- Muscular action -- Respiration as combustion -- Respiration as relative to physiological needs -- Vital activity of plants and animals approximated -- The sensori-motor system -- Localization of nervous functions -- Nervous integration -- Beginnings of comparative psychology -- Conditioned reflexes -- Mind as conditioning life -- XII. Biogenesis and its implications -- Early ideas of infection and spontaneous generation -- Redi (1621-97), Needham (1713-81), and Spallanzani (1729-99) -- Pasteur (1822-95) on fermentation -- Biogenesis versus abiogenesis -- Early work on microbic origin of infectious disease -- Koch (1843-1910) on anthrax -- Immunity -- Biology and disease -- Some failures of the theory of the microbic origin of disease -- Viruses -- XIII. Development of the individual -- Seventeenth-century embryologists -- Wolff (1738-94) and his successors -- Von Baer (1792-1876) and the mammalian ovum -- The germ-layer theory -- The biogenetic law -- The earlier morphological embryologists -- First reaction of evolutionary theory on embryology -- The systemic evolutionary embryologists -- Digression on metamorphosis -- Developmental mechanics -- Experimental embryology -- XIV. Sex -- First attempts to analyse the nature of generation -- Early writers on pollination -- Nineteenth-century study of pollination -- Sexual dimorphism -- Alternation of generations -- Early observations on cellular phenomena of sexual union -- Nuclear phenomena of sex -- Factors determining sex and sex character -- Parthenogenesis -- XV. Mechanism of heredity -- I. Earlier conceptions of heredity -- Galton (1822-1911) and the statistical study of the phenomena of heredity -- Weismann (1834-1914) and the germ plasm -- Discontinuous variation, 1859-1900 -- De Vries (1848-1935) and the doctrine of mutations -- The work of Mendel (1822-84) and its rediscovery (1900) -- Epilogue - Index.