PART I. GENERAL 



HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 



Biology, chemistry, medicine, and surgery, in their evolution, 

 contributed to a new branch of knowledge, Bacteriology, whose 

 subsequent development has become of inestimable importance to 

 each. Indeed, bacteriology illustrates the old adage, "The child 

 is father of the man," for while it is in part the offspring of the 

 medicine of the past, it has established itself as the dictator of the 

 medicine of the present and future, especially so far as concerns 

 the infectious diseases. 



THE EVOLUTION OF BACTERIOLOGY 

 I. BIOLOGIC CONTRIBUTIONS; THE DOCTRINE OF SPONTANEOUS GENERATION 



Among the early Greeks we iind that Anaximander (43 d Olym- 

 piad, 610 B. C.) of Miletus held the theory that animals were 

 formed from moisture. Empedocles of Agrigentum (450 B. C.) 

 attributed to spontaneous generation all the living beings which he 

 found peopling the earth. Aristotle (384 B. C.) is not so general in 

 his view of the subject, but asserts that "sometimes animals are 

 formed in putrefying soil, sometimes in plants, and sometimes in, the 

 fluids of other animals." 



Three centuries later, in his disquisition upon the Pythagorean 

 philosophy, we find Ovid defending the same doctrine of spontaneous 

 generation, while in the Georgics, Virgil 'gives directions for the 

 artificial production of bees. 



The doctrine of spontaneous generation of life was not only current 

 among the ancients, but we find it persisting through the Middle 

 Ages, and descending to our own generation. In 1542, in his 

 treatise called "De Subtilitate," we find Cardan asserting that 

 water engenders fishes, and that many animals spring from fermenta- 

 tion. Van Helmont gives special instructions for the artificial 

 production of mice, and Kircher in his "Mundus Subterraneus " 

 (chapter "De Panspermia Rerum") describes and actually figures 

 certain animals which were produced under his own eyes by the 

 transforming influence of water on fragments of stems from different 

 plants.* 



About 1 67 1, Francesco Redi seems to have been the first to 

 doubt that the maggots familiar in putrid meat arose de novo: 

 * See Tyndall: "Floating Matter in the Air." 

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