The Invisible Army Under the Microscope

At the turn of the century, a significant debate occupied the scientific world, centered on the theory of 'Spontaneous Generation.' The first view is that all life may have descended from some non-human vertebrate; the second, that living matter may still be endowed with life spontaneously. For twenty centuries after Aristotle, men found no difficulty in believing that shellfish, eels, and insects were the spontaneous products of nature. However, modern scientific experimentalists have introduced a healthy skepticism.

We now turn to the germs of life, or bacteria, and their hearing upon animated nature. Our atmosphere is the receptacle for the myriads of these microscopic beings. When a surface becomes exposed to the air, they penetrate the interior of the liquid and begin growth, resulting in what we commonly call 'rot.' These little organisms are the agents of our dissolution. When life has retreated from all parts of an organism, the work of putrefaction begins. Its task is to unmake this body, to destroy its forms and dismantle its materials. The work done is to destroy it, to reduce it to salts, liquids, and gases, to go back again into the vast reservoir whence all life is incessantly hunting.