Instead they laid their
eggs upon the gauze, where they hatched in due time, while no maggots
were generated in the meat. Thus from this time onward it became
gradually understood that, at least in the case of all the larger and
higher forms of life, Harvey's dictum, as announced some years
previously, was true, and that life comes only from life.
But the invention of the microscope opened the way for a renewal of the
controversy regarding the origin of life. Bacteria were discovered in
1683; and it was soon observed that no precautions with screens or other
stoppers could prevent bacteria and other low organisms from breeding in
myriads in every kind of organic matter. Here apparently was an entirely
new foundation for the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It was freely
admitted that all the higher forms of life arise only by process of
natural generation from others of their own kind; but did not these
microscopic organisms prove that there was "a perpetual abiogenetic
fount by which the first steps in the evolution of living organisms
continued to arise, under suitable conditions, from inorganic
matter"?[9]
[Footnote 9: Encyclopaedia Britannica, Vol. I, p. 64.]
The famous "barnacle-geese" ought not to be omitted from any sketch of
the vicissitudes of this doctrine of Biogenesis.
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