HISTORY OF BACTERIOLOGY 



The science of Bacteriology is still young, and like 

 normal youth is marked by constant, vigorous growth, 

 yet the micro-organisms with which it deals are veri- 

 tably antique, for the following quaint observation is 

 said to have been made two thousand years ago: "It 

 is to be noticed that if there be any marshy places, 

 certain animals breed there, which are invisible to the 

 eye and yet, getting into the system through the mouth 

 and nostrils, cause serious disorders." 



Later on when the early scientists were looking 

 through their very imperfect lenses at certain liquids, 

 they saw many hardly visible moving bodies. They 

 said, "Surely these moving things must be alive," and 

 as they had not put anything into the liquids, it was 

 natural to conclude that the little forms must have 

 been spontaneously generated. So great a thinker as 

 Aristotle had previously made a similar statement, for 

 when he saw birds one morning flying about over the 

 valley of the Nile, where the day before not a bird 

 was present, he devoutly concluded that they must 

 have been generated from the mud of the Nile, that 

 great Father of Plenty. It is within the memory of 

 some living today that this theory of spontaneous 

 generation was still believed. 



About 1675 Leuwenhock, the son of a Dutch lens 

 grinder, saw through one of his lenses in a drop of 

 stagnant water minute moving forms. Soon some of 

 the scientists became interested and studied these "ani- 

 malcules" or little animals, as they were called. They 



