C.C. NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 37 



LECTURES. 



" MICROBES." 

 By Dr. Wilson. 



I HE first person to see a microbe appears to have been a 



■ Dutchman, Lewenhock, as early as 1675, but very 



little account was taken of his observation until 



Schwann, in 1837, discovered that fermentation was 



produced by a minute organism, and that putrefaction 



was brought about by some cause which existed in air 



and could be destroyed by heat. 



This discovery was the starting point for many others. Pasteur 



began his classical work, and for many years was occupied in finding 



out the connection between various diseases and the microscopic 



organisms, to which the names of microbes or bacteria have been 



^'''^FoUowing on the lines of Schwann's work, he proved satisfactorily 

 that no putrefaction could go on without living organisms, and that 

 hese came from the air. Another school of biologists fought long 

 aeainst the position taken up by Pasteur and maintained the counter 

 heTrJ of spontaneous generation. Life, they said, could start up 

 suddenly at places where no life had been, and though by the end of 

 he sixties they had been beaten all along the line, ^he controversy 

 was anything but unfruitful as the experiments of Tyndall and Lord 

 "Lr! which set the question at rest for ever, laid the foundations of 

 antiseptic surgery and of our present knowledge of infectious diseases 

 Pasteur moreover, investigated the changes due to fermentation of 

 alcoholic liouors, and the viscosity and bitterness, occasionally so 

 destructive, were traced to the presence of special microbes, by the 

 exclusion or destruction of which the vintage was saved. 



