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FROM PARACELSUS TO HARVEY
A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume II: The Beginnings of Modern Science | ||
LEEUWENHOEK DISCOVERS BACTERIA
The seventeenth century was not to close, however, without another discovery in science, which, when applied to the causation of disease almost two centuries later, revolutionized therapeutics more completely than any one discovery. This was the discovery of microbes, by Antonius von Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723), in 1683. Von Leeuwenhoek discovered that "in the white matter between his teeth'' there were millions of microscopic "animals''—more, in fact, than "there were human beings in the united Netherlands,'' and all "moving in the most delightful manner.'' There can be no question that he saw them, for we can recognize in his descriptions of these various forms of little "animals'' the four principal forms of microbes—the long and short rods of bacilli and bacteria, the spheres of micrococci, and the corkscrew spirillum.
The presence of these microbes in his mouth greatly annoyed Antonius, and he tried various methods of
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FROM PARACELSUS TO HARVEY
A History of Science: in Five Volumes. Volume II: The Beginnings of Modern Science | ||