Microbes. History and essence of scientific discovery

MOST IMPORTANT SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
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Microbes. History and essence of scientific discovery

The most important scientific discoveries

Directory / The most important scientific discoveries

Some of the most perspicacious minds have previously expressed vague conjectures about the existence of some smallest creatures, invisible to the naked eye, responsible for the spread and occurrence of infectious diseases. But all these conjectures remained only guesses. After all, no one has ever seen such small organisms.

The first who had the great honor to lift the veil into the hitherto unknown world of living beings - microorganisms that play a huge role in nature and in human life, was the Dutchman Leeuwenhoek.

Anthony van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) was born in the Dutch city of Delft to Antonison van Leeuwenhoek and Margaret Bel van den Burch. His childhood was not easy. He received no education. The father, a poor craftsman, sent the boy to study with a cloth maker. Soon Anthony began to independently trade in manufactory.

Then Leeuwenhoek was a cashier and accountant in one of the trading establishments in Amsterdam. Later, he served as a guardian of the judicial chamber in his native city, which, according to modern concepts, corresponds to the positions of a janitor, stoker and watchman at the same time. Leeuwenhoek became famous because of his unusual hobby.

Even in his youth, Anthony learned how to make magnifying glasses, became interested in this business and achieved amazing art in it. In his spare time, he liked to grind optical glasses and achieved a virtuoso skill in this. In those days, the strongest lenses magnified the image only twenty times. Leeuwenhoek's "microscope" is essentially a very powerful magnifying glass. She magnified up to 250-300 times. These wonderful lenses turned out to be a window to a new world.

At the beginning of 1673, Dr. Graaff sent a letter to the secretary of the Royal Society of London. In this letter, he reported "about a certain inventor living in Holland by the name of Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, who makes microscopes far superior to those known to this day by Eustache Divina."

Science should be grateful to Dr. Graaf for the fact that, having learned about Leeuwenhoek, he managed to write his letter: in August of the same year, Graaf died at the age of 32. Perhaps, if not for him, the world would never have known about Leeuwenhoek, whose talent, deprived of support, would have withered away, and his discoveries would have been made again by others, but much later. The Royal Society contacted Leeuwenhoek and a correspondence began.

Carrying out his research without any plan, the self-taught scientist made many important discoveries. At that time, biological science was at a very low stage of development. The basic laws governing the development and life of plants and animals were not yet known. Scientists also knew little about the structure of the body of animals and humans. And many amazing secrets of nature were revealed before the eyes of every observant naturalist who possessed talent and perseverance.

Leeuwenhoek was one of the most prominent researchers of nature. He was the first to notice how blood moves in the smallest blood vessels - capillaries Leeuwenhoek saw that blood is not some kind of homogeneous liquid, as his contemporaries thought, but a living stream in which a great many tiny bodies move. Now they are called red blood cells. There are about 4-5 million red blood cells in one cubic millimeter of blood.

Another discovery of Leeuwenhoek is also very important: in the seminal fluid, he first saw spermatozoa - those small cells with tails that, penetrating into the egg, fertilize it, as a result of which a new organism arises.

Examining thin plates of meat under his magnifying glass, Leeuwenhoek discovered that meat, or rather, muscles, consists of microscopic fibers.

Leeuwenhoek was one of the first to conduct experiments on himself. It was from his finger that blood flowed for research, and he placed pieces of his skin under a microscope, examining its structure in various parts of the body, and counting the number of vessels that penetrate it. Studying the reproduction of such little respected insects as lice, he put them in his stocking for several days, endured bites, but in the end he found out what kind of offspring his wards had.

He studied the secretions of his body depending on the quality of the food eaten. Leeuwenhoek also experienced the effects of drugs. When he fell ill, he noted all the features of the course of his illness, and before his death, he meticulously recorded the extinction of life in his body.

But the main thing was that in 1673 Leeuwenhoek was the first person to see microbes. For long, long hours, he examined everything that caught his eye through a microscope: a piece of meat, a drop of rainwater or hay infusion, the tail of a tadpole, the eye of a fly, a grayish coating from his teeth, etc. What was his amazement when in the dentist on the fly, in a drop of water and many other liquids, he saw a myriad of living beings. They looked like sticks, and spirals, and balls. Sometimes these creatures had bizarre processes or cilia. Many of them moved quickly.

Here is what Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society of London about his observations: “After all attempts to find out what forces in the root (horseradish - A) act on the tongue and cause it irritation, I put about half an ounce of the root in water: in a softened state it is easier A piece of root remained in the water for about three weeks.On April 24, 1673, I looked at this water under a microscope and with great surprise saw in it a huge number of tiny living creatures.

Some of them were three or four times longer than wide, although they were not thicker than the hairs covering the body of the louse ... Others had the correct oval shape. There was also a third type of organisms, the most numerous, - the smallest creatures with tails. "So one of the great discoveries was made, which marked the beginning of microbiology - the science of microscopic organisms.

“In my observations, I spent more time than some people think,” Leeuwenhoek wrote. “However, I was engaged in them with pleasure and did not care about the chatter of those who make such a fuss about it: “Why spend so much work, what is the use of it?”, But I do not write for such, but only for lovers of knowledge.

It is not known for sure whether anyone interfered with Leeuwenhoek's activities, but he once wrote: "All my efforts are aimed at one goal only - to make the truth obvious and apply the little talent I have received to divert people from old and superstitious prejudices."

In 1680, the scientific world officially recognized Leeuwenhoek's achievements and elected him a full and equal member of the Royal Society of London - despite the fact that he did not know Latin and, according to the then rules, could not be considered a real scientist. Later he was admitted to the French Academy of Sciences.

Leeuwenhoek's letters to the Royal Society, to scientists, to political and public figures of his time - Leibniz, Robert Hooke, Christian Huygens - were published in Latin during his lifetime and took four volumes. The last one came out in 1722, when Leeuwenhoek was 90 years old, a year before his death.

Leeuwenhoek went down in history as one of the greatest experimenters of his time. Glorifying the experiment, he wrote the prophetic words six years before his death: "One should refrain from reasoning when experience speaks."

From the time of Leeuwenhoek to the present day, microbiology has made great progress. It has grown into a widely branched field of knowledge and is of great importance both for all human practice (medicine, agriculture, industry) and for the knowledge of the laws of nature. Tens of thousands of researchers in all countries of the world tirelessly study the vast and diverse world of microscopic creatures. And they all honor Leeuwenhoek, the outstanding Dutch biologist who started the history of microbiology.

Author: Samin D.K.

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