Word: animalcula
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...year 1675 I discovered very small living creatures in rain water, which had stood but few days in a new earthen pot. . . . When these animalcula or living atoms moved, they put forth two little horns, continually moving. . . . These little creatures, if they chanced to light on the least filament or string, or other particles, were entangled therein, extending their body in a long round and endeavoring to disentangle their tail. . . . I have seen several thousands of these poor little creatures, within the space of a grain of gross sand, lie fast clustered together in a few filaments...
...doctors ascribed to various invisible contagia the causes of diseases. In 1658 by means of a simple microscope Athanasius Kircher of Fulda, Germany, saw "worms" in the blood of people stricken with Black Plague. Those probably were the first germs ever noted. As microscopes were improved more kinds of animalcula were observed, and doctors gradually associated them with disease. But not until 1876 was a germ proved to be a cause of a disease. The disease: anthrax in cattle. The germ: Bacillus anthracis. The discoverer: Robert Koch...
Assembled Animalcula. Dr. Charles Manning Child of the University of Chicago spent last summer at the Scripps Biological Institute? at Miramar, Calif. There he collected some tiny animals of the sponge family (corymorpha, helmet-shaped bodies) ; ground them in a mortar until they were shapeless pulp; bolted the mess through fine silk. In the strained liquid were living corymorpha cells, single or in groups of small number. After the liquid stood a while, the cells collected into small spheres. Many of the spheres?assembled from originally different animals?developed into complete & healthy corymorphae...
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