Bacteria seen before there was a word for it
The first time bacteria had ever been seen was by Antony van Leeuwenhoek – who even wrote about it in English. Known as the father of microbiology, van Leeuwenhoek used the microscope extensively and even published work in English for the Royal Society. His first observations were in 1676 and in 1700 he wrote his letter Concerning Worms in Sheeps, Livers, Gnats and Animacula in the Excrements of Frogs. There he describes what would be known as bacteria as small eels or small round particles. But the research was not really taken up and it was over 100 years before
Origin of the word bacteria
Bacteria as a word comes from a Latin attempt to write out the Greek word bacterium which means staff or stick. This was a description of the first bacteria observed which were oblong. Why Latin? Because the word bacteria was initially used in 1828 in a major work by the German scientist Christian Ehrenberg whose focus was the study of microscopic organisms. This book was written in the scientific language of the day – Latin. Some twenty years later the word bacteria was used for the first time in English in The cyclopædia of anatomy and physiology published by the Irish physician Robert Todd in 1847. Todd took a great interest in physiology, was a pioneer in the microscopic study of cells known as histology and gave his name to the illness known as Todd’s palsy.
For much too long there was no idea that bacteria were the origin of disease. Pasteur pushed things forward on the subject, but it was Robert Koch was finally demonstrated that germs and bacteria exist. For his work he won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1905.
Understanding of bacteria
