Everything you need to know about the history of Microbiology. Some of the most frequently asked questions are as follows:-
Q.1. Which is the first book in the world to describe a fungus?
Ans. The Rig-Veda is the first book in the world to describe the fungus mushroom in Sanskrit hymns in the form of similes by comparing the head of a devil or a wicked person with the cap (pileus) of a mushroom which can be easily blown away even by a light current of air.
Q.2. Who discovered ‘little boxes’ or ‘cells’?
Ans. Robert Hooke, an Englishman discovered cells in 1665.
Q.3. Who first described ‘animalcules’?
Ans. Anton van Leeuwenhoek was perhaps the first to describe microorganisms through magnifying lenses and wrote a series of letters on them between 1673 and 1723 to the Royal Society of London. He regarded them as ‘animalcules’ which have been identified from his drawings to be bacteria and protozoa.
Q.4. Which microorganisms are isolated from the well known ‘sourdough bread’ which is eight to ten times more acidic than conventional breads?
Ans. Lactobacillus San Francisco and Saccharomyces exiguous.
Q.5. What were the main characteristics of the microscopes made by Anton van Leeuwenhoek.
Ans. They consisted of a rectangular plate with a lens and a mounting needle which was adjustable with butterfly like knobs. The specimen was placed on the tip of the adjustable needle and viewed from the other side of a tiny and nearly spherical lens. The maximum magnification with Leeuwenhoek’s, microscopes was 300 times (Fig. 1.1).
Leeuwenhoek (1632 -1723) was a cloth merchant and draper, in Delft, Holland, who developed simple but very powerful microscopes of silver and copper plates. His microscope comprised of a spherical glass lens held by two metallic plates, a mounting needle or specimen holder, and screws with butterfly like knob for positioning and focusing the specimen. He sent drawings of some of his observations in the form of a series of letters to the Royal Society of London, which were published and he was honored with fellowship of the society i.e., (FRS).
Q.6. Name the supporter of wrong spontaneous generation or abiogenesis.
Ans. John Needham in 1745.
Q.7. Who were the supporters of biogenesis?
Ans. Francesco Redi, an Italian, set in experiments in 1668, against spontaneous generation. Lazzaro Spallanzani also an Italian and Rudolf Virchow a German challenged spontaneous generation with the concept of biogenesis and finally it was confirmed by Louis Pasteur.
Q.8. How did Pasteur disprove the theory of spontaneous generation with his swan-necked flask?
Ans. Pasteur initially poured beef broth into a long necked flask. In the second step he heated the long neck of flask and bent it into an S-shaped curve. He found that microorganisms did not appear in the cool solution even after a long period. Some of such original vessels of Pasteur which were later on sealed did not show signs of contamination even after a period of 100 years.
Q.9. Which period is regarded as the ‘Golden age of microbiology’ ?
Ans. The period between 1857 and 1914.
Q.10. Who performed the first vaccination?
Ans. Edward Jenner, a young British physician was the first to vaccinate in 1798 with scrapings collected from cowpox blisters. He inoculated a healthy volunteer with cowpox material by scratching the person’s arms with a pox contaminated needle. The scratch turned into a raised bump. The volunteer became mildly sick within a few days and recovered, but never contracted either cowpox or smallpox.
Q.11. How did the physicians in ancient China protect people against smallpox?
Ans. Ancient Chinese physicians immunized patients by collecting scales from drying pustules of people suffering from mild smallpox, grinding the scales to fine powder and inserting the powder into the nostrils of the people to be protected.
Q.12. How did Louis Pasteur in 1880 discover the principle and working of vaccination?
Ans. Pasteur in his experiments noted that the bacterium responsible for fowl cholera or chicken cholera lost its virulence, i.e., the ability to cause disease after the bacterium was grown in the laboratory for long periods. He noted that the strains with decreased virulence were capable of inducing immunity against subsequent infections by their virulent counterparts.
Discovery of this phenomenon was a step towards successful inoculation with cowpox material against smallpox by Edward Jenner. Louis Pasteur used the term vaccine for the use of inoculation with a virulent (or non-virulent) cultures to provide protection against disease.
Q.13. The colonies of bacterium Staphylococcus aureus do not grow around the contaminating colony of Penicillium. Why?
Ans. The reason is that mould secretes the antibiotic penicillin around it which kills the bacteria.
Q.14. What was the interesting contribution of Rene Dubos, a French microbiologist?
Ans. Rene Dubos discovered two antibiotics called gramicidin and tyrocidine, both of which were produced by the bacterium Bacillus brevis, cultured from soil.
Q.15. In which year did Edward Jenner use the first vaccine?
Ans. In the year 1798.
Q.16. Who discovered in 1892 that tobacco mosaic was caused by a virus which is passed through filters fine enough to stop all known bacteria?
Ans. Dimitri Ivanovski.
Q.17. Which age is the golden age of microbiology?
Ans. The period from 1860 to 1910 tabulated below is known as the golden age of microbiology because maximum discoveries were made in that period.
Q.18. Which is the first book of the world to describe a mushroom?
Ans. The mushroom was first described in the Rig-Veda for the first time as chhumb (Sanskrit mushroom) in the form of a simile comparing the head of a devil or a wicked person with the cap or pileus of a mushroom which can be easily blown away even by a light current of air.
Q.19. Which was the first bacteriological laboratory established in India?
Ans. Imperial Bacteriological Laboratory was the first of its type which was established in 1889 at Pune under leadership of Dr. Alfred Lingard. In 1893 it was shifted to Mukteshwar in Kumaon. Later on the major part of it was shifted to Izatnagar, Bareilly and in due course of Time it emerged as Indian Veterinary Research Institute (I.V.R.I.), Izatnagar, Bareilly, with some of its divisions/campus at Mukteshwar.