The paper reconstructs the historical roots of regeneration research, now a major subject in biomedicine, focussing on the development of concepts and practices from the epigenesis vs preformation debate in the late XVIII century to the experimental embryology in the first half of XX century. In this time span, regeneration attracted a good deal of attention because of its role as a natural experiment for testing developmental as well as physiological hypotheses. It is therefore a useful historical subject in order to understand the pathways of progress in life sciences and to shed some light on the epistemological debates of contemporary biomedicine.
