The history of bacteriology / by William Bulloch.

  • William Bulloch
Date:
1938
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The history of bacteriology / by William Bulloch. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    quarto published in 1718 and now exceedingly scarce—is in two parts, the first dealing with the construction of microscopes, while the second, running to 96 pages, deals with the animalcules he studied. It is divided into 35 chapters and illustrated with 12 engraved plates. The second edition—the one usually met with—was published in 1754, thirty-one years after Joblot’s death. Joblot’s work is really the first treatise on protozoology and the animal¬ cules of infusions, but is not of much interest from the strict bacteriological point of view except that it concerns his experiments on spontaneous generation, to be referred to later. During the eighteenth century a large number of other works appeared dealing almost entirely with the animal rather than the bacterial denizens of organic infusions. These have only indirectly a bacteriological interest apart from the origin of animalcules generally. To this group belong the works of Andry (1700), F. C. Lesser (1738), Trembley (1744), John Hill (1752), M. F. Leder- miiller (1760-5), Wrisberg (1765), B. Corti (1774), J. C. Eichhorn (1775), von Gleichen (1778), and particularly in 1786 the posthumous work of the great Danish naturalist Otto Friderich Muller (1730-84), to be referred to later. The books of Henry Baker on The microscope made easy (1742) and Employment for the microscope (1753) did much to popularize microscopy in England while adding some facts on the animalcules of waters and infusions. An ad¬ mirable analysis of all the early work on infusoria will be found in Biitschli (1887-9). Early in the eighteenth century, and chiefly as the out¬ come of the microscopical discoveries of Leeuwenhoek, there was a recrudescence of the old doctrine which attri¬ buted certain diseases to the presence of invisible animal¬ cules. The idea can be traced back at least to the time of Columella (c. 60 b.c.) and Varro (116-26 B.c.), two of the early writers on husbandry. Thus Columella, writing on the rules which should guide those who contemplate living in the country, says that ‘neither a marsh nor a public highway should be near your buildings, for the former always throws up noxious and poisonous steams during