The Seeds of Life

by Edward Dolnick

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  NOTES

  SOURCES FOR QUOTATIONS AND FOR ASSERTIONS THAT MIGHT PROVE ELUSIVE CAN be found below. To keep these notes in bounds, I have not documented facts that can be readily checked in standard sources. Publication information is provided only for books and articles not listed in the bibliography.

  Wherever possible, I have cited works in their easiest-to-find form. For anything and everything to do with Antony van Leeuwenhoek, in particular, the marvelously organized and thorough website Lens on Leeuwenhoek (http://lensonleeuwenhoek.net) is invaluable.

  PROLOGUE

  notoriously “hot-headed”: Aubrey, Brief Lives, 145.

  he was crack-brained”: Ibid.

  the idioms are fossils: Wright, Harvey, 59.

  “Thy Observing Eye first found: Ibid., 224.

  for Recreation and Health sake: Keynes, Harvey, 343.

  “much delighted in this kind: Ibid.

  “no seed at all: Ibid., 345.

  a “control” group: James Lind, who showed in 1747 that lemons prevent scurvy, is often cited as the first to carry out a controlled experiment. Others credit Francesco Redi, for experiments in 1666 showing that flies do not spontaneously generate within meat scraps, or Lazzaro Spallanzani, who showed in 1768 that microorganisms do not spontaneously generate inside sealed containers.

  “They peremptorily did affirm: Keynes, Harvey, 345.

  CHAPTER ONE: ONWARD TO GLORY