Moonday’s Heroic Hunks in History: Leeuwenhoek

On September 17, 1683, Antony van Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society about his observations of the plaque between his teeth, the first observations on living bacteria ever recorded. He also recorded his observations on two ladies and on two old men who had never cleaned their teeth in their lives. In the mouth of one of the old men, Leeuwenhoek found “an unbelievably great company of living animalcules, a-swimming more nimbly than any I had ever seen up to this time. The biggest sort. . . bent their body into curves in going forwards. . . Moreover, the other animalcules were in such enormous numbers, that all the water. . . seemed to be alive.”  Makes you want to stop reading and go brush and floss. Yuck!

Antony van Leeuwenhoek (1632-1723) was a Dutch scientist and tradesman and the father of microbiology. Leeuwenhoek was unusual for his time. He was basically uneducated and spoke only Dutch. His father was a basket-maker and his mother from a family of brewers. He was a draper by trade where he used primitive simple microscopes in his work as a draper with fabrics. Leeuwenhoek made some of the most important discoveries in the history of biology. Using microscopes that he himself handcrafted which could magnify up to 200x, he was the first to observe and describe bacteria, free-living and parasitic microscopic protists, sperm cells, blood cells, microscopic nematodes and more. These discoveries contributed significantly to the progress of modern medicine.

Scientifically yours, Rita Bay

BTW, All day tomorrow (Tuesday, September 18th), Burst/Champagne authors—January Bain, Rita Bay, Jane Tombs, J.A. Garland, Angelica Hart and Zi (Vixen Bright and Zachary Zane), R.G. Hart, Kathy Pitner—will visit The Haunt at Paranormal Romance with talk, excerpts, and loads of swag including book giveaways, a free book download, and a
surprise.

I plan to do a ‘Name that Character Contest’ (HA!—some surprise) for my contemporary fantasy short story Nimue’s Daughter. It’s a rescue from Armageddon based on the Arthurian mythology. It’s also a work in progress for Shared Whispers, the freebie anthology from Champagne authors that will be published and available for free download in January. Visit with us at The Haunt at Paranormal Romance [Subscribe at The_Haunt_at_PNR-subscribe@yahoogroups.com] Also, check out my graphic for the story which I used for PR.  Rita