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LEEUWENHOEK AND HIS ‘“‘ LITTLE ANIMALS” 
only a very little of the matter taken from between the 
teeth was mingled with it) seemed to be alive. The long 
particles too, as before described, were also in great 
plenty. 
I have also taken the spittle, and the white matter that 
was lodged upon and betwixt the teeth, from an old man’ 
who makes a practice of drinking brandy every morning, 
and wine and tobacco in the afternoon; wondering 
whether the animalcules, with such continual boozing, 
could e’en remain alive. I judged that this man, because 
his teeth were so uncommon foul,’ never washed his 
mouth. So I asked him, and got for answer: ‘‘ Never 
in my life with water, but it gets a good swill with wine 
or brandy every day.” Yet I couldn’t find anything 
beyond the ordinary in his spittle. I also mixed his spit 
with the stuff that coated his front teeth, but could make 
out nothing in it save very few of the least sort of living 
animalcules hereinbefore described time and again. But 
in the stuff I had hauled out from between his front teeth 
(for the old chap hadn’t a back tooth in his head), I made 
out many more little animalcules, comprising two of the 
littlest sort. 
Furthermore, I put some strong wine-vinegar in my 
own mouth, and then set my teeth, and let the vinegar run 
betwixt ’em time after time: and after doing so, I rinsed 
my mouth out thrice with fair water. Afterwards I once 
more fetched out some of the foresaid stuff from between 
my front teeth, as well as from between my grinders ; 
and I mixed it divers times both with spittle and with 
clean rain-water: and most always I discovered in it 
an unbelievable number of living animalcules, though most 
of ’em were in the matter I got from between my back 
teeth, and only a few had the appearance of Fig. A. 
1 
Hoole (1798) prudishly refrained from translating the observations 
made upon this disreputable ‘old gentleman”’, who, in the Phil. Trans. 
(1684), is called simply—without other descriptive detail—" a good fellow ”. 
” 
2 ongemeen vurjl MS. buyten gemeen vuyl printed letter. 
