Animalcule!

“They hit him with pain and agony!

And they sat back and watched in glee!

All he could do was cough and cough!

They were the enemies you can’t see!”

With all the wild imaginations we see nowadays, I wonder the time when someone many centuries back imagined that there are small organisms which are not visible to the naked eyes which actually cause disease! 

The amount of imagination required for this would be immense! Remember that he or she has not seen any organism but theorized that they are all over us and cause disease!

Of course the description may not be accurate at first but the first step was very essential! They were initially called the ‘Animalcule!’ 

Read on!

So Animalcule (Latin for ‘little animal’; from animal and -culum) is an archaic term for microscopic organisms that included bacteria, protozoans, and very small animals. 

Though it gained momentum only later, the concept seems to have been proposed at least as early as about 30 BC, as evidenced by this translation from Marcus Varro’s Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres:

“Note also if there be any swampy ground, both for the reasons given above, and because certain minute animals, invisible to the eye, breed there, and, borne by the air, reach the inside of the body by way of the mouth and nose, and cause diseases which are difficult to be rid of!”

The person though responsible for seeing these for the first time and later called the father of Microbiology was not even a science guy but a person who had special interest in the making of lens! 

Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek was raised in Delft, Dutch Republic, and worked as a draper in his youth and founded his own shop in 1654. He became well-recognized in municipal politics and developed an interest in lens making. 

Using single-lensed microscopes of his own design and make, Van Leeuwenhoek was the first to observe and to experiment with microbes, which he originally referred to as dierkens, diertgens or diertjes.

He was the first to relatively determine their size. Most of the “animalcules” are now referred to as unicellular organisms, although he observed multicellular organisms in pond water. He was also the first to document microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa, red blood cells, crystals in gouty tophi, and among the first to see blood flow in capillaries. Although Van Leeuwenhoek did not write any books, he described his discoveries in letters to the Royal Society, which published many of his letters in their Philosophical Transactions!

Leeuwenhoek was one of the first to conduct experiments on himself. It was from his finger that blood was drawn for examination, 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 permeate it! 

Leeuwenhoek diligently began to search for his animalcules.He found them everywhere! In rotten water, in ditches and on his own teeth! Which made him rub his teeth with salt every morning! 

Van Leeuwenhoek has been recognized as the first person to use a histological stain to color specimens observed under the microscope using saffron!

Even during the last weeks of his life, Van Leeuwenhoek continued to send letters full of observations to London. The last few contained a precise description of his own illness. He suffered from a rare disease, an uncontrolled movement of the midriff, which now is named van Leeuwenhoek’s disease! He died at the ripe old age of 90! His contributions to Microbiology though are immeasurable!  Immeasurable also are the contributions to cinema by birthday celebrity Gopishantha aka Manorama who had done over 1000 movies in her lifetime!

Now reduced the animalcules in your mouth by brushing your teeth and sleep!

Shubh ratri!