Leeuwenhoek Sees Microorganisms

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The Dutch draper and amateur microscope-maker Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, grinding single-lens microscopes of extraordinary power, looked at a drop of pond water and saw thousands of tiny creatures swimming. He called them animalcules. Microbiology had begun, although no one yet understood what it would mean for medicine, and two centuries would pass before Pasteur and Koch connected microbes to disease.