24 



Microbes and You 



dirty shirt in a vessel containing wheat, and after twenty-one days' 

 storage in a dark place, to allow fermentation to be completed, the 

 vapors of the seeds and the germinating principle in human sweat 

 contained in the dirty shirt will generate live mice." An English 

 naturalist says of the views of a doubter of abiogenesis: "So may 

 we doubt whether, in cheese and timber, worms are generated, or 

 if beetles and wasps in cow dung, or if butterflies, locusts, shell- 



w^yf^^^^ 



Fig. 8. Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493-1541). {From Elementary 

 Bacteriology, /• E. Greaves and E. O. Greaves, 5th. ed. CopyrigJit 1946, 

 W. B. Saunders Company, PJiiJadelpJiia.) 



fish, snails, eels, and such life procreated of putrefied matter which 

 is to receive the forms of that creature to ^^4lich it is bv formative 

 power disposed. To question this is to question reason, sense and 

 experience. If he doubts this, let him go to Egypt, and there he 

 will find the fields swarming with mice begot of the mud of Nylus, 

 to the great calamity of the inhabitants." 



These examples are enough to give you an idea of how fantastic 

 concepts can become when a limited bit of knowledge is available. 

 In the light of our present information vv^e can partially explain 

 how many of these recipes for creating life resulted in the evolution 



