Histology of the lymphatics. His drew the illustrations.

Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

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A new classification of tissues based on histogenesis.

His was, more than any other person, responsible for the introduction of the microtome, although Ranvier and other French people had earlier employed microtomes of simpler types.

In this work His compared the various layers and organs of the embryo to a series of elastic tubes and plates. He thought that the local inequalities of growth and the differences in the consistency of the tissues might account for the various organs and structures. This work led to the idea of “developmental mechanics”.

A systematic account of early human embryology that stimulated further investigation in a field in which His stood highest among his contemporaries. He was the first to study the human embryo as a whole.

This is generally considered the first clear statement that nerve cells in the brain might be independent units rather than forming an anastomotic network—as Gerlach, Golgi, and most others believed—although there are earlier hints of this from a variety of sources.  His’s conclusion was based on embryological observations in the spinal cord, suggesting that axons arise from nerve cell bodies (one per nerve cell), followed later by dendrites, and that any fusion of processes, if they occur at all, must be a secondary event. (Larry W. Swanson).

In this paper on neuroblasts (young neurons) and their development in the embryonic spinal cord, His coined the term, “dendrite,” for what had been called protoplasmic processes since the term was introduced by Deiters in 1865 (Larry W. Swanson).

His described the atrioventricular bundle which was later named after him. English translation in F. A. Willius and T. E. Keys, Cardiac classics, 1941, p. 695.

His was largely responsible for the Basle Nomina Anatomica, the first attempt to produce a standard anatomical nomenclature. English translation by L.F. Barker, 1907.

To authenticate the remains of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm His senior performed one of the earliest examples of scientific facial reconstructions, reconstructing the soft tissues onto a plaster cast of the skull using facial tissue measurements recorded from a number of cadavers. He employed a sculptor to produce the three-dimensional facial reconstruction. Tim Valentine & Josh P Davis, Forensic facial identification: Theory and practice of identification (2015) 100.

"This final summary of brain development, published in the year of his death, contains a wealth of classic illustrations that have been adapted ever since in textbooks" (Larry W. Swanson).