SPONTANEOUS GENERATION OF MICROBES 2^ 



too Strongly and the generative power of the infusions had 

 thus been destroyed. 



In order to refute this Spallanzani carried out fresh experi- 

 ments. In a long series of tests conducted with exceptional 

 care he answered nearly all the criticisms that had been made 

 by Needham.^^ Nevertheless, he did not succeed in convincing 

 his contemporaries and the controversy remained unsettled 

 for very nearly a hundred years longer. 



It is interesting to note that, in parallel with Spallanzani, 

 in the period between the publication of his first and second 

 works, analogous experiments were being carried out by the 

 Russian M. Terekhovskii, who was sent from St. Petersburg 

 to Strasbourg for scientific investigations. 



In his dissertation, De chao infusorio Linnaei,^^ which he 

 published in 1775 in Latin, Terekhovskii recorded the results 

 of his extensive investigations on the ' animalcules of liquors ', 

 i.e. the microscopic living creatures which appear in all kinds 

 of organic infusions — the infusoria, flagellates and other 

 primitive organisms. In his opinion it was absurd to 

 suppose that even the very simplest organisms with all the 

 extraordinary complication of their structures which " no 

 mechanic, even the most skilful who ever lived, could under- 

 stand completely, try as he might, still less reproduce " might 

 " be formed by chance from a chaotic mixture of inanimate 

 particles ". In effect, as S. Sobol' pointed out, the numerous 

 and very carefully performed experiments of Terekhovskii 

 showed that " the spontaneous generation of animalcules does 

 not take place under any conditions". However, these state- 

 ments and experiments of the Russian scientist, which we 

 now know were completely correct, did not receive recogni- 

 tion in the scientific world of that time and were quickly 

 forgotten. 



The doctrine of spontaneous generation was still defended 

 by many scientists and philosophers in the end of the eigh- 

 teenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century. In 

 particular, it was developed by representatives of the Ger- 

 man idealistic philosophy. I. Kant (1724-1804)" himself con- 

 sidered that the primary internal cause of the development 

 of organisms was supernatural (metaphysical) and that there- 

 fore the hypothesis of spontaneous generation was merely a 



