Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, the first bacteriologist / [David Fraser Fraser-Harris].
- David Fraser Fraser-Harris
- Date:
- [1921]
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, the first bacteriologist / [David Fraser Fraser-Harris]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![[Reprinted from Tim Scientific Monthly, February, igji] ANTHONY VAN LEEUWENHOEK THE FIRST BACTERIOLOGIST By DAVID FRASER HARRIS. M. D.. B. Sc. (Lend.). D. Sc., F. R. S. E., F. R. Sc., PROFESSOR OF PHYSIOLOGY ANI> HISTOLOGY, DALHOUSIK UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, N. S. There wore two great workers with the microscope in the latter half of the seventeenth century the Italian, Malpighi, and the Dutchman, Leeuwenhoek. Of these the former was in his own time and still is in our day by far the hotter known man. Malpighi was the father of all such as work with the microscope; the creator of histology everywhere, not merely of Italian, the father of both the histologies, vegetable and animal. Much of his life was spent in Bologna, the old-world, arcaded, sun-bathed city, the seat of a university founded more than 800 years ago. But very different was the place to which my wife and I made a pilgrimage in the Christmas holidays of 1007, the unfrequented little town of Delft in Holland, if known in more than name to the great mass of my countrymen, known as the seat of the manufacture of a certain kind of pottery called “Delf.” Though the place is by no means devoid of interest, all its other interests are for biologists thrown into the shade by the recollection that this was the scene of Leeuwenhoek’s Iifo-long labors with the microscope, the place where the first bacteriologist was born, lived, worked, died and was buried. The town is on the lino of the canal between Rotterdam and the Hague. Modern it certainly is not, for it was founded at the end of the eleventh century by Duke Geoffrey of Lorraine. In the palace or I’risenhof, William of Orange was assas¬ sinated in 1584; in the old church or Oudo Kerk as old as the town itself, two of Holland’s naval heroes, Van Trump and Diet Hein, lie buried. Its New Church, founded in 1881, is the last resting place of a most important person in the history of European theology, Hugo (hotins (Groot). Hero, too, is the family tomb of the Princes of Orange. In 1654 there occurred a disastrous gunpowder explosion in which up¬ wards of 1,200 inhabitants perished. Delft is best known for its pottery, but this industry is almost extinct, the present manufactures being carpet-weaving, distilling and dyeing; there is a polytechnic school, a school ol military engineering,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30622839_0003.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
