🔬 Microbe Hunters: The Story of How We Found the Invisible

1674 — Leeuwenhoek: a Dutch draper grinds lenses and becomes the first person to see bacteria ("little animals") in rainwater and his own mouth. He never believed they caused disease.

1860s — Pasteur: proves that fermentation and spoilage come from microbes (not spontaneous generation), develops pasteurisation, saves the silk and wine industries, and later creates the rabies and anthrax vaccines.

1876 — Koch: proves a specific bacterium causes anthrax and lays down "Koch's postulates" — the rules for proving a germ causes a disease. He identifies the TB bacillus in 1882.

1882 — Metchnikoff: discovers phagocytes eating bacteria — cellular immunity is born.

1885 — Pasteur's rabies vaccine: the first vaccine created in the laboratory, saving a boy bitten by a rabid dog.

1909 — Ehrlich: the "magic bullet" — the first targeted drug (salvarsan for syphilis), founding chemotherapy.

1928 — Fleming: returns from holiday to find a mold (Penicillium) killing his bacteria — penicillin. Florey and Chain turn it into a usable drug by 1944, and the antibiotic age begins.

The lesson: every one of these discoveries began with curiosity about the invisible. Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters (1926) tells the whole saga — and it is free in our library.

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