SPONTANEOUS GENERATION OF MICROBES 21 



germs are present." Thus, all bodies can contain within them- 

 selves organic structures, but these are still invisible, in- 

 complete, and only in the form of germs. In these germs 

 there are already present and pre-existing all the conditions 

 for future specific organisation. Thus, living things are 

 formed spontaneously from them by later development. 



We find the same ideas concerning spontaneous generation 

 in the works of the French scientist G. L. Buffon (1707- 

 1788).^* He also considered that the whole of nature is full 

 of ' ubiquitous units or germs of life ' but, in opposition to 

 Leibnitz, he attributed to them a material character. These 

 material particles endowed with life are capable, according 

 to Buffon, of uniting with one another to form lower plants 

 and animals from which the highly organised creatures later 

 e\olve. Conversely, on the decay of the body, individual 

 existence ceases but living particles of matter which were at 

 first scattered and then entered into its composition can now, 

 once more, unite into living bodies. From them microbes 

 originate. In this Buffon saw the explanation of the pheno- 

 menon of the spontaneous generation of microscopic organ- 

 isms in putrefying organic liquids and infusions. 



This view was shared by the contemporary and friend of 

 Buffon, the Welsh Roman Catholic priest and naturalist J. T. 

 Needham (17 13-1 781). He believed that in each microscopic 

 particle of organic matter there was concealed a special ' vital 

 force ' which could animate the organic matter in an infusion. 

 Thus Needham developed vitalistic views, which were very 

 common in those days, concerning the essence of life and its 

 begetting. However, Needham's importance in connection 

 with the problem ^vhich Ave are considering depends, not 

 only on his vie^vs, but also on the extensive experiments 

 which he carried out in an effort to confirm the spontaneous 

 generation of micro-organisms. He says : 



I took a quantity of mutton gravy hot from the fire and 

 shut it up in a phial closed with a cork so well masticated that 

 my precautions amounted to as much as if I had sealed my 

 phial hermetically. I thus excluded the exterior air that it might 

 not be said my moving bodies drew their origin from insects 

 or eggs floating in the atmosphere. I neglected no precaution 

 even so far as to heat violendy in hot ashes the body of the phial 



