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| Plaque outside Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's old house in Delft |
The dark age of microbiology existed in the years preceding Antoni van Leeuwenhoek's most famous microscopic study of Delft's canal water and the investigative work of his contempories, Robert Hooke and Athanasius Kercher (who was most likely the first human to witness microscopic life). In these days we had recognised the effects of what we later called microbes but we had little evidence of what was causing them, for who could not wonder what induced a feverish, spluttering epidemic of 'flu? Nor who could not wonder what was controlling the geochemical processes occurring across the Earth? We just did not have the tools then to probe their world any further in any scientific way.