This was named after poison! The two most popular things named after it can bring both the biological and physical world to a halt!
Both of them are so common and usually harmless! But when a dangerous one surfaces then rest assured, the whole world gets to know!
One is naturally seen while the other is created unnaturally by a sick individual (at least in the mind!)
Before further ado; the name which means Poison in latin is VIRUS!
The history of computer virus pretty interesting and deserves another blog! The biological one is also not far behind as it stopped the whole world during COVID!
Then again, before you get to know about its history, you must know about the Tobacco plant chiefly for educational purposes!
The tobacco plant was brought to Europe from the New World during the early sixteenth century, and by the middle of the nineteenth century, it was a major Dutch crop.
In 1879, Adolph Mayer, director of the Agricultural Experiment Station in Wageningen, Holland, undertook studies on the diseases of tobacco. He showed that a leaf-mottling disease could be transmitted by rubbing juice from diseased plants onto the leaves of healthy plants. He coined the name ‘tobacco mosaic disease’ and suggested that the etiology was bacterial, although no such agent could be cultured.
Later on Dmitry Ivanovsky, a Russian microbiologist between 1887 and 1890, investigated the mosaic disease of tobacco plants occurring in Eastern Europe. He found that the disease-causing factor passed through a porcelain filter that had pores fine enough to hold back bacteria. He thus demonstrated that the cause of tobacco disease was due to a ‘filterable virus’ – the term virus coming from the Latin meaning poison. This term is now considered obsolete and is abbreviated to simply ‘virus’.
Ivanovsky’s work was confirmed in 1895 by the Dutch botanist Willem Beijerinck, who in addition showed that the disease produced by the filtered sap could be transferred serially plant-to-plant, proving that the agent was living and self-replicating rather than being simply a chemical toxin.
Finally in the 1930s, Wendell Stanley was able to produce the tobacco mosaic virus in solid crystalline form. He was the first person to be able to crystalize a virus. In this way, he was able to show that viruses are a type of particle and not a liquid contagion, which many had previously thought.
Wendell Stanley was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1946!
So the thing which is as old as the first Cold to strike the Homo Sapien was finally seen in 1930s! Also it is such a tiny thing that we cannot see even with routine microscope! Sometimes size does not matter! What matters is the capability! Which reminds me of actor Dhanush! Some of his movies can be watched only because of him!
Now wash hands and take warm water and cover yourself nicely so that you do not get a cold and Sleep!
Shubh ratri…
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