OF THE 



UNIVERSITY 



OF 



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BACTERIOLOGY. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"Omne vivum ex vivo" The overthrow of the doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation Earlier bacteriological studies The birth of modern bacteri- 

 ology. 



THE study of Bacteriology may be said to have had 

 its beginning with the observations of Antony van 

 Leeuwenhoek in the year 1675. Though it is during 

 the past decade and a half that this line of research has 

 received its greatest impulse, yet, by a review of the 

 developmental stages through which it has passed in its 

 life of more than two centuries, we see that it has a 

 most interesting and instructive history. From the 

 very outset its history is inseparably connected with 

 that of medicine, and as it now stands its relations to 

 hygiene and preventive medicine are of fundamental im- 

 portance. It is, indeed, through a more intimate ac- 

 quaintance with the biological activities of the unicellular, 

 vegetable micro-organisms that modern hygiene has at- 

 tained the prominence and importance now justly ac- 

 corded to it. Through studies in the domain of bac- 

 teriology our knowledge of the causation, course, and 

 prevention of infectious diseases is daily becoming more 

 accurate, and it is needless to emphasize the relation 

 of such knowledge to the manifold problems that pre- 

 sent themselves to the sanitarian. Though the contri- 



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