A brief history of Microbiology

Before microorganisms were seen, some investigators suspected their existence and responsibility for disease.

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The Greeks anticipated microbiology. The Greek Hippocrates, associate particular signs and symptoms with certain illness and realized that diseases could be transmitted from one person to another by clothing or other objects.

 

The Romans also contributed to microbiology. The scholar and writer Varro proposed that invisible animals entered the body through the mouth and nose to cause disease. Also  philosopher Lucretius and the physician Girolamo Fracastoro suggested that disease was caused by invisible living creatures.

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Bubonic plague (black plague), appeared in the Mediterranean region around 542 A.D., where it reached epidemic proportions and killed millions. But the causes of this phenomena were vague and obscure because the technology to study them was lacking. consequently, they remained cloaked in mystery and regarded with superstition--a trend that led even well-educated scientists to believe in spontaneous generation.

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Until the seventeenth century, advance of microbiology was hampered by the lack of appropriate tools to observe microbes. True awareness of the widespread distribution of microorganisms and some of their characteristics was finally made posible by the development of the first microscopes.

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The earliest microscopic observations appear to have been made between 1625 and 1630 on bees and weevils by the Italian Francesco Stelluti, using a microscope probably supplied by Galileo. Around 1665, Robert Hooke built a compound microscope (one which light passes through two lenses) and used it to observe thin slices of cork. He coined the term cell to describe the orderly arrangement of small boxes that he saw. Also he published "Micographia" which describe the microscopic world for the first time. The likely earliest record of microbes is in his works, using single-lens microscope he described spots of mold he found on the sheepskin cover of a book: 

   These spots apperar'd, to be pretty shap'd vegetative body, which, from almost the same part of the Leather, shot out multitudes of small long cylindrical and transparent stalks, not exactly straight but little bended with the eight of a round and white knob that grew on the top of each of them...                

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Meanwhile in the Netherlands Anton van Leeuwenhoek a cloth merchant an amateur lens grinder was observing and describing microorganisms. The lenses he made were of excellent quality; some gave magnifications up 300X and free of distortion. He may have illuminated his liquids specimens by placing them between two pieces of glass and shining light on them at a 45° angle to the specimen plane.  Everywhere he looked he found what he called "animalcules". He found them in stagnant water, in sick people, and even he scraped the plaque from his teeth, and from the teeth of some volunteers who had never cleaned their teeth in their lives, and took a close look at that. He recorded.

In the said matter there were many little living animalcules, very prettily a moving...Moreover, the other animalcules were in such enormous numbers, that all the water...seemed to be alive.

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Over the years Leeuwenhoek observed all the major kinds of microorganisms: protozoa, algae, yeast, fungi and bacteria in spherical, rod and spiral forms. Starting in the 1670s he wrote numerous letters to the Royal Society in London. Leeuwenhoek constructed more than 250 small powerful microscopes and pursued his studies until his death in 1723. Because of his extraordinary contributions to microbiology, he is known as the father of bacteriology and protozoology. After Leeuwenhoek's death, microbiology did not advance for mor than a century. Eventually microscopes became more available, and progress resumed. Several workers discovered ways to stain microorganisms with dyes to make them more visible.