Los Cazadores de Microbios | Capítulo 1 - Anton van Leeuwenhoek | Paul de Kruif

Ah

[Music]

250 years ago a humble man

named Benja first peered into

a new and mysterious world populated

by thousands of different species of

tiny beings, some very ferocious and

deadly, others subtle and beneficial, and

even many whose discovery has been more

important to humanity than the

discovery of any continent or

archipelago.

[Music]

Anton Valen 'Avenue Q' October 24,

1632 - August 26, 1723. Now the

life of Benja is almost as unknown

as were in his time the

fantastically tiny animals and

plants he discovered. This is the life

of the first microbe hunter. It is the

story of the audacity and tenacity

that characterized him and that are

attributes of those who, driven by

an indefatigable curiosity, explore and

penetrate a new and wonderful world.

These hunters, in their struggle to

record this microcosm, do not hesitate to

risk their lives. Their adventures are

full of failed attempts to Errors and

false hopes;

some of them, the most daring,

perished, victims of the deadly

microorganisms they diligently

studied. For many, the glory achieved

through their efforts was vain or negligible.

[Music]

Today, scientists

constitute a prestigious element of

society; they have laboratories in

all major cities, and their exploits

fill the pages of newspapers,

sometimes even before becoming

true achievements. A

moderately qualified student has the

doors open to specialize in

any branch of science and, in

time, to occupy a

well-paid professorship in a welcoming and well-

equipped university. But let us go back to

the time of BNE Hook, 250 years ago, and

imagine the young La Avenue,

eager for knowledge, recently graduated

from school, and facing the dilemma of choosing a

career. In those times, if a

boy recovering from mumps

asked his father what the cause

of this illness was, there is no doubt that the father would

answer, "The sick boy is possessed by

the evil spirit of mumps."

This explanation was to be

Convincing, but it had to be accepted without

further inquiry for fear of being

beaten or thrown out of the house for

daring to

question his father's science. The father was

the authority; that

was the world 250 years ago when

the avenue was born. Man had barely

begun to shake off the

darkest superstitions, ashamed of his

ignorance. It was a world in which

science was taking its first steps—

science, which is nothing other than the

attempt to find the truth through

careful observation and

clear reasoning—that world sent

Servetus to the stake for the abominable

sin of dissecting a human body and

condemned Galileo to life imprisonment for

daring to demonstrate that the earth

revolved around the sun.

Antonio Baila Bien was born in 1632 among

the blue windmills, the

small streets, and the wide canals of

Delft, Holland. He descended from an honorable

family of basket makers and

brewers, occupations still highly respected

in Holland today. Antonio's father

died young, and his mother sent him to He was sent to

school as a child to study for a career as a

civil servant, but at 16 he turned his back on

books and became an apprentice in

an Amsterdam shop. This was his

university. Imagine a

modern science student acquiring

scientific knowledge among pieces

of fabric, listening for six years to the

jingle of the

cash drawer bell, and always having to be

polite to the long line of

Dutch women who desperately haggled over every

last penny. Well,

for six years this was his

university.

At 21, Benja left the

shop and returned home. Abel got married and opened his

own fabric shop. In the 20 years

that followed, very little is known about him

except that he remarried and

had several children, almost

all of whom died of old age. It was surely during

this period that he was appointed caretaker

of the Delft town hall, and he developed the

strange hobby of grinding lenses. He had

heard that by making lenses from a

piece of transparent glass, one could

see things much larger

than they appear to the naked

eye. We know about

Benja's life between the ages of 20 and 40, but it is

undeniable that at that time he was

considered an ignorant man. He could

speak nothing but Dutch, a language

despised by the esoteric world, which

considered it the domain of shopkeepers,

fishermen, and braziers. At that time,

cultured people expressed themselves in

Latin, but Benja couldn't even

read it.

The Bible in Dutch was his only book.

With all his ignorance, it actually worked in his favor

because, isolated from all the verbiage

of his time, he had no guide other than

his own eyes, his personal

reflections, and his own unique judgment—a

system not difficult for him, for there was never a

man more stubborn than our

Antonio La Benja.

How fun it would be to see things

magnified through a lens, but

buying lenses? Benja, never was a

man more distrustful. Buying

lenses? Not him, he would make them himself.

[Music]

Visiting optical shops, he learned

the rudiments necessary to grind

lenses. He frequented the company of

alchemists and apothecaries, from whom

he observed their secret methods for

obtaining metals from minerals, and he

began to learn the trade. The

goldsmith was a man of the finest craftsmanship; it was

n't enough for him that his

lenses equaled the best made

in Holland, but that they had to surpass them.

Even after achieving this, he would spend

hours upon hours refining them.

Then he mounted his lenses in frames or

blanks of gold, silver, or copper that he

himself had extracted from the ores

amidst bonfires, smoke, and strange smells.

Nowadays, for a modest sum,

researchers can acquire a

gleaming microscope, turn the

micrometer screw, and prepare to

observe, without many of them

even knowing or caring how

the device is constructed. But

as for Benja,

naturally his neighbors called him

crazy, yet even with his

hands blistered and covered in sores, he

persisted in his work, forgetting his

family and without a thought for his friends.

He worked until late into the night,

devoted to his delicate task. His good

neighbors chuckled to themselves as

our man sought a way to

manufacture a minuscule lens, less than

three millimeters in diameter, so perfect

that it would allow him to see the The smallest things were

magnified enormously and with

perfect clarity. Our shopkeeper was

very uneducated, but he was the only man in

all of Holland who knew how to make such

lenses, and he himself said of his neighbors, "

We must forgive them in view of their

ignorance."

Satisfied with himself and at peace with the

world, this shopkeeper dedicated himself to examining

with his lenses everything that fell into his hands.

He analyzed the muscle fibers of a

whale and the scales of his own skin. At

the butcher shop, he obtained ox eyes

and was amazed by the structure

of the lens. He spent whole hours

observing the wool of sheep and the hairs of

beavers and hares, whose fine

filaments transformed under his little

piece of glass into thick trunks.

With the utmost care, he says, he examined the head of

a fly, inserting the brain mass

onto the very fine needle of his microscope.

Upon looking at it, he was astonished. He examined

cross-sections of wood from two

different species of trees and observed

the interior of plant seeds. "

Impossible!" he exclaimed when for the first time

he contemplated the incredible perfection of the

sucking mouth of a flea and the legs

of a The louse was like a

puppy sniffing everything around it

indiscriminately, without any regard for the consequences.

2 There was

never a man more skeptical than

Benja. He looked and looked again, a hundred

times, at this bee stub or that

louse leg. For months on end, he left

samples stuck on the needle of his

strange microscope. And to be able to

observe other things, he was forced to

make hundreds of microscopes so he

could re-examine the first

specimens and carefully compare

the results of the new observations.

Only when he was sure there was no

variation in what he glimpsed

after looking and looking at it hundreds

of times did he say this to some

drawing of his observations. And even then, he was not entirely

satisfied. He used to

say, "

People who take up

a microscope for the first time say, 'Now I see one thing,

then it seems different.' Even the

most skilled observer can be wrong

in these observations." He spent more

time than many would believe,

but he carried them out with great pleasure,

ignoring those who asked him why he was going to so much trouble

and

what his purpose was. But I don't write. For

these people, but for philosophers, so

for 20 years I worked in complete

isolation. At that time, the second

half of the 17th century, new

movements were emerging all over the world. In

England, France, and Italy,

singular men began to doubt what

until then had been considered

truth. "We will no longer remain silent because

Aristotle affirms this or the Pope

that," these rebels said. "

We will only be guided by our own

observations, repeated a thousand times, and by

the exact weights of our scales.

We will only adhere to the result

of our experiments and nothing more." And in

England, a few of these

revolutionaries formed a society

called the Invisible College, which had to

be invisible because if Cranwell

had found out about the strange matters they

intended to elucidate, he would have

hanged them as conspirators and heretics.

And you have to see what experiments

those skeptical researchers came up with!

The wisdom of that time

affirmed that if a spider was placed

inside a circle made with

unicorn horn powder, it could not get out

of it. And what did the members

of the Invisible College do? And one of them One

brought what was supposed to be

unicorn horn powder, and another arrived with a

small spider. The entire society

gathered under the light of large

candelabras, and in the midst of great

silence, the experiment began. The

result was that

a circle was made with unicorn horn powder,

placing a spider in the

center, but immediately the spider ran

out of the circle. How

elementary, we would think today, of course,

but we remember that among the members

of that society were

Robert Boyle, founder of

scientific chemistry, and also Isaac Newton. Such

was the invisible college, and when

Charles II ascended the throne, the college emerged from

clandestinity, achieving the dignity of a

Royal Society of England. Its members

were the first audience of the BNE

Hood in Delft. There was a man who didn't

laugh at Antonio dancing in hook. It was

Graf's arena. Here in the Royal Society, he was appointed

a corresponding member for having

informed him about his studies of the

human ovary. Although by then the

avenue was very sullen and distrustful, he

allowed Graf to look through those

tiny lenses, unique in all of Europe.

After looking through them, Craft

felt Ashamed of his own fame,

he hastened to write to his colleagues at

the Royal Society: "Have

Antonio Val Avenue

write to you about his discoveries

with all the naive familiarity of a

country bumpkin who doesn't grasp the

profound wisdom of the philosophers to

whom he is addressing himself." Benja replied to

the Royal Society's request. It was a

long missive written in vernacular Dutch with

digressions on everything that exists under the

stars. The letter was headed thus: "

Exposition of some of the

observations made with a microscope

devised by Mr. Lab in Hook concerning

the substances found in the

skin, in the flesh, etc., the sting of

a bee, etc." The Royal Society

was absorbed. Those sophisticated and

wise gentlemen were mesmerized and

amused, but above all, the

Society was astonished by the

wonders. Aben Hud claimed to have

seen through his lenses. In

thanking Benja, the secretary of the

Royal Society told him that he hoped

this, his first communication, would be

followed by others,

and it was—hundreds of them over the

course of 50 years.

Letters in a familiar style,

saturated with savory comments on

the ignorance of his neighbors, exposing

the impostures of charlatans,

refuting age-old superstitions,

interspersed with reports of his own health.

But between paragraphs of this

familiar prose, the enlightened members

of the Royal Society had the honor of

reading immortal and

glorious descriptions of the discoveries made

with the magic eye of that

Dell grocer. And what discoveries! When we

reflect on them, many of the

fundamental scientific discoveries seem incredibly simple.

How can we explain that for thousands of years

men groped about without seeing

what was right in front of their eyes? The same thing

happened with microbes. Today, there is hardly

anyone who hasn't

seen them somersaulting on the

screen of some movie theater. People

of little education have seen them

swimming under the lenses of

microscopes, and the most novice

medical student is

able to show us the germs

of hundreds of diseases. Why was it

so difficult to discover microbes?

But let us put aside our

petulance and Let us remember that when he

came to retirement, microscopes did not exist,

only simple magnifying glasses or lenses

through which he could have

stared at the fence until he grew old

without discovering a creature smaller

than a cheese mite. We have already said

that he continually perfected his

lenses with the persistence of a lunatic,

examining everything in front of him,

both the most intimate and the most

unpleasant. But this apparent mania

served as preparation for that

fortuitous day when, through his

toy lens mounted in gold, he observed a

small drop of clear rainwater.

What he saw that day is the beginning of

this story. Benja was a

manic observer, but who else but such a singular man would have thought to

observe something so uninteresting—one

of the millions of drops of water that

fall from the sky? His 19-year-old daughter, Maria,

who lovingly cared for her

eccentric father, watched him

as he, completely absorbed,

took a small glass tube, heated it

red-hot, and stretched it until it was as

thick as a hair. Maria adored

her father; woe to the neighbor who dared to... to

make fun of him, but what on earth did he

intend to do with that capillary tube?

Now our distracted man, with

dilated eyes, breaks the tube into pieces,

goes out into the garden, and bends over a

clay pot there to measure

the amount of rainfall. He returns to the

laboratory, the glass tube in line,

on the microscope's needle. Suddenly,

Benja's agitated voice is heard: "

Come here quickly! In the rainwater, there are little

creatures swimming and turning. They are a thousand

times smaller than any of the

creatures we can see with the naked eye.

Look what I've discovered!"

The day of her life had arrived for

Benja.

Alexander discovered gigantic elephants in India,

never before seen by the Greeks. But these

elephants were as familiar to the

Indians as horses were to Alexander.

Caesar, in England, encountered

savages who astonished him, but

those Britons knew each other

as centurions. How Caesar Balboa

boasted of having seen the

Pacific before any European, and

that ocean was as familiar to the

Indians of Central America as the

Mediterranean for Balboa, but La Ven Job,

this Dell janitor, had admired a

fantastic world of beings invisible to the

naked eye, creatures that had lived,

grown, fought, and died completely hidden from

the gaze of man since the

beginning of time, beings of a

species that destroys and annihilates

entire races of men, ten million

times larger than themselves, beings

fiercer than fire-breathing dragons

or hydra-headed monsters,

silent killers that slay

children in their warm cradles and

kings in their fortified palaces. This

is the invisible, insignificant,

yet relentless and sometimes benevolent world to

which La Ven Hop, among all men

of all countries, was the first to

glimpse. That was the day of his life for

La Ven Hop.

Our man shamed us with the

admiration and wonder that nature caused him,

so full of

perplexing events and impossible things.

How I would like to go back to those

dawns of science when men

began to stop believing in

miracles,

finding themselves before new

Even more wondrous events would occur if

for a moment I could experience what

our naive Dutchman felt: his

excitement at discovering that world and the

nausea provoked by those

despicable, swarming creatures, as he

called them. I have already

said that Benja was a very

distrustful man. So enormously small

and strange were those little animals that they did

n't seem real to him, so he

observed them until his hands

cramped from holding the

microscope for so long and his eyes

reddened from staring so intently.

But it was true; he saw those

beings again, and not just one species, but another

larger than the first, moving with great

agility on their many legs of

incredible subtlety. He discovered a third

species and a fourth so small that he

couldn't discern its shape, but it was alive, it

moved, it traveled great distances in this

immense world. From a drop of water,

more agile beings stopped, remaining

motionless as if

balanced on a point, then they spun

with the speed of a top, describing

a circle no larger than a

grain of sand. That is how

Benja, this man who apparently

worked, defined them. Without a plan or method, he was very

perceptive. He never ventured to theorize, but he

was a wizard at measurements. The difficulty

lay in obtaining a measurement for

such small objects. With a frown, he

muttered, "What size is the tiniest little

creature, really?"

Anxious to find a unit of

measurement, he

rummaged through the corners of his memory,

among the thousands of things he had

observed so closely. The

result of his calculations was: "This

animal and I are a thousand times smaller than

the eye of a large louse." He was a man

of precision because we

now know that the eye of an adult louse

is neither larger nor smaller than the eyes of 10,000 of

its kind. It could, therefore, serve as a

kind of comparison.

But where did these strange and

minuscule inhabitants of the water droplet come from? Did they rain

from the sky? Did they climb unseen

from the ground to the flowerpot?

Had God created them from nothing, at his

whim? Benja believed in God with the

same fervor as any Dutchman of the

17th century. She always mentioned God as

the creator of the universe, and not only did she believe

in him, but she admired him. From the

depths of her heart, she was so great that she

knew how to shape the wings

of bees with exquisite skill, but at the same time,

Bne Hood was also a materialist. Her

common sense told her that life

comes from life. Her sincere faith

told her that God had created all

living beings in six days, beginning

a process and then resting

to reward the good

observers by punishing the sloppy

and charlatans. She

dismissed as improbable the possibility

that those animals fell from the

sky; it was

certain that God could not make

the little animals spring from nothing. She

had found in the flowerpot there was only

one way to elucidate this question:

experimenting.

Benja carefully washed a glass,

dried it, and placed it under the

roof gutter. She took a drop in one of her

capillary tubes and ran to examine it

under the microscope. If there were

a few

little creatures swimming there, they exist even in

fresh rainwater. But in reality, she

hadn't proven anything, because perhaps they lived

in the gutter and the water carried them along.

Then she took a large

porcelain plate, glazed blue on the

inside, cleaned it meticulously, and

going out into the rain, placed it on top of

a large drawer, making sure that the

raindrops didn't splash mud

inside the plate. She poured the first water out so

that the container

was absolutely clean, and then collected

a few drops in her thin tubes. Returning to

her laboratory, she said, "I have proven it! This

water does not contain a single creature. They don't

fall from the sky." [

Music] She

kept the water, examining it hour after

hour and day after day, and on the fourth day, she saw

that the tiny creatures began to appear

along with prisms of dust and

Tiny threads,

that's what you call being persistent. Let's imagine

a world in which all men

submitted their absolute judgments to

the ordeals of experiments as

logical as a Laven Hood.

And do you think he wrote to the Royal

Society stating what he had just

discovered? Not a chance. He was a

circumspect man. Under his lenses passed

waters of all kinds: water preserved in

the confined atmosphere of his laboratory,

water contained in a vessel on the

roof of his house, water from the not-so-

clean Bell canals, and water from the

deep, cool well in his garden. In

all of them he could observe the same

creatures, gaping at their

enormous smallness. He found that thousands of

these beings were smaller than a grain of

sand, and comparing them to the

cheese mite, they bore the same proportion as

a bee to a horse. He contemplated them

tirelessly, watching them swim among themselves,

mingled like a swarm of mosquitoes. He

went from shop to shop, naturally

stumbling, like all those who,

devoid of presence, find what they

never set out to seek. His

new little creatures were marvelous, but

not the Satisfied, he continued to delve

into everything imaginable, trying to

observe in more detail, searching for the

reason behind things. What is it that makes

pepper spicy? He wondered one

day, making the following conjecture: there

must be tiny spikes on the

pepper particles that

sting the tongue when eaten. But did

these spikes exist? He began to

fuss with dried pepper, sneezing and

sweating, without obtaining any

peppercorns small enough

to examine under the microscope.

Finally, he thought of soaking the

pepper for several weeks. After this time,

with very fine needles, he isolated

an almost invisible pinch of pepper and

introduced it with a drop of water into one

of the capillary tubes. Then he looked. He

observed something capable of turning the

head of the sanest man. He

forgot about the possible little dots on the

pepper. With the interest of an

attentive child, he observed the acrobatics of an

incredible number of small animals of various

kinds that moved easily and

haphazardly from one side to the other. This is

how Job stumbled upon a

magnificent culture medium for raising

his new and tiny creatures. Little creatures,

now the time had come to

inform the great

lords of men of all this. With the utmost

simplicity, he wrote to them, expressing his own astonishment

on page after page of neat

calligraphy. In plain words, he told them

how a million of these little creatures could be found

in a grain of sand, and how a

single drop of his pepperwater, in which they

also thrived, contained

more than 2,700,000.

Translated into English, the letter was read to

the learned skeptics who didn't even

believe in the magical virtues of the

unicorn's horn, and it astonished the

wise audience. But what was this? The

Dutchman claimed to have discovered

beings so small that in a single drop

of water there were as many as the number

of inhabitants of his homeland.

What nonsense! It was undeniable that the

cheese mite was the smallest animal

created by God. But there were a

few members of the Royal Society who

took him seriously. The precision of

Bne Hopp was evident to them. Everything he

had revealed to them up to this point was

verified. The reply consisted of

a letter addressed To the

scientific concierge, begging him to detail

how he had constructed his

microscope and explain his method of

observation,

the letter irritated the 'Avenue Q'. The criticism

from the Delft idiots didn't bother him,

but the Royal Society—he believed he was

dealing with philosophers—would he write to them

revealing the requested details or

keep his

observations to himself from now on. We can imagine him

muttering, "Good heavens, these methods for

discovering great mysteries! How much

work and sweat they have cost me! What

ironies I must endure to

perfect my microscopes and

my methods of observation! But

creators need an audience!" He knew that

the unbelievers of the Royal Society

would be as tenacious in proving the

nonexistence of his little creatures as he had been

in discovering them. He felt

deeply hurt, but creators

need an audience,

and so he replied in a lengthy

letter assuring them that he wasn't exaggerating.

He explained his calculations: "Modern

microbe hunters with all their

apparatus are only slightly

more accurate," including a series of

computations, sums, multiplications, and

divisions, until the letter seemed like the

task at hand. of a schoolboy's arithmetic and

ended by saying that many citizens

of Delft had seen with the aid of his

lenses those strange and novel little

animals and that they had congratulated him

for it, that he would send them certificates

from prominent citizens of the 12

jazz ticos, a notary public and

eight other trustworthy people, but that he would by

no means tell them how he had

made his microscopes, how he

kept his secret

so that people could look through his

little devices, he himself held them

with his own hands and that they should not even

dare to touch them because he would

throw them out of his house, he was like a child

eager and proud to show his

friends a beautiful and juicy apple but

without allowing them to touch it for fear that he would

bite it, so the Royal Society

commissioned Robert Hooke and Anima and Ebro to

build the best microscopes they

were capable of and also to

prepare pepperwater of the

best quality. On November 15,

1677, Hawk arrived at the meeting in a state of

great excitement because Job had not

lied, there they were. Incredible

creatures! The members rose from their

seats, crowding around the

microscope. They looked and exclaimed, "That

man is a wizard of observation!" An

unforgettable day for Benja.

Shortly after, the Royal Society

appointed him a member and sent him an elegant

membership certificate in a silver box

whose lid bore the engraved emblem

of the society. Benja's reply was

not long in coming: "I will serve

faithfully for the rest of my life." And

true to his promise, he

continued sending them those letters, a

mixture of family comments and

scientific observations, until his death at the

age of 91. But sending a microscope? The

Royal Society even went so far as to commission

Dr. Ma Linux to write a

report on that janitor, discoverer

of the invisible. Ma Linux offered De La

Avenue a considerable sum for one of

his microscopes, since he had hundreds of

them. Surely he could part with

one,

but no, the gentleman of the Royal Society

wanted something more. There were

some oyster embryos in a bottle, here were

various little animals, here we made... and so

that the Englishman could make his observations,

the Dutchman held his microscopes

while, out of the corner of his eye... She watched

the undoubtedly honorable visitor to ensure he did

n't touch anything, hordes of anything at all. "

But your instruments are marvelous!"

exclaimed Ma. "Linux shows things with

a clarity a thousand times greater than the best

lenses we have in England." "

I would very much like," replied Ven Job, "to

show you my best lenses and my

special method of observation, but these are

things I reserve exclusively for myself

and don't teach to anyone, not even my own

family." "

Those little creatures were

everywhere," Benja told the Royal

Society, "even in my own mouth I

had found a multitude of

those beings. Visible despite

my 50 years," she wrote. "I have

exceptionally well-preserved teeth, as

every morning I

vigorously rub them with salt, and

after cleaning my molars with a

goose feather, I rub them vigorously

with a cloth." But when she looked at her

teeth with a magnifying mirror, she noticed

that a white, viscous substance remained between them. "What could

that white substance be composed of?" she asked. "I

took a particle

of this substance from my teeth." He mixed it with

pure rainwater, dipped a small tube in it,

placed it on the microscope's needle,

locked himself in his office, and wondered what it was that

emerged from the gray

opacity of the lens, becoming

perfectly sharp as he focused.

Here was an incredibly subtle being

leaping in the water of the tube like the fish

called a pike. There was also a second

species that swam slightly

forward, suddenly turning and

then performing a series of somersaults. There were other,

slower-moving creatures, like

simple curved sticks, but the

Dutchman, by dint of observing them until his

eyes reddened, managed to see them

move. They were alive; it was

undeniable. He had a veritable zoo in his mouth. There were

creatures

shaped like flexible reeds that

moved with the majestic pomp of

an episcopal procession. There were spirals

that swirled in the water like

agitated corkscrews.

For this man, everything that fell into his

hands was an object of experimentation,

even himself. Tired of his

long observations, he went for a

walk under the enormous trees that

were shedding their leaves. Yellowish in

the dark mirrors of the canals, she

needed to rest. Suddenly she came across

an old man, a very

interesting fellow. While talking to this old man,

who wrote the letter to the

Royal Society, a person of orderly life

who never drinks brandy and rarely

wine and doesn't smoke, I inadvertently noticed his

long, gaunt teeth. It occurred to me to

ask him how long it had been since he had

cleaned them. To which he

replied that he had never done so in

his life. Instantly, he forgot about his

tired eyes. What a zoo he must have

in his mouth! The old man

dragged that

dirty but virtuous victim of his

curiosity to his laboratory, hoping, of course, to

find millions of little creatures in his

mouth, but mainly wishing to

inform the Royal Society that the

man's mouth harbored a new

species of creature that slithered

among the others, folding its body into

graceful coils like a snake. The

water in the little tube seemed animated by

those tiny beings. It

seems strange that in none of her 112

letters did the Benja make the slightest allusion

to the harm that these little animals could

cause to man. She had seen them in the

drinking water, discovered them in her mouth,

years later found them in the

intestines of frogs and

horses, and even in her own

bowels when she was struck by what she called "loose bowels." She

found them in swarms without it

ever occurring to her that these little

creatures could be the cause of her

ailment.

Modern hunters, if they have

the time to study the

writings of Benja Job, have much to

learn from her refusal to draw

hasty conclusions, avoiding being led astray

by imagination. For

in the last 50 years,

thousands of microbes have been denounced

as the cause of as many

diseases, when in

most cases these germs

were merely casual guests in the body

when the illness appeared.

Benja was very careful not to make

hasty attributions. By

instinct, she understood the

infinite complexity of reality, and given the

confusing labyrinth of causes that govern

life, she avoided falling into the danger of

determining one thing as the cause of another.

The years passed; she continued running

her shop and made sure that the

Delft town hall was thoroughly

swept. He grew more brusque and

distrustful, spending more and more hours

peering through his hundreds of microscopes

and making countless

admirable discoveries. He was the first to observe, in

the tail of a small fish whose head he had

previously inserted into a

glass tube, the capillaries through which

blood passes from the arteries to the

veins, thus completing the English garden's theory of

blood circulation.

To his scrutinizing eyes,

even the most sacred, the

most unclean, and the most romantic aspects of life were merely

interesting material for observation.

He discovered the spermatozoa of man,

and his cold investigation of such

delicate matters might have been deemed

indecent had he been a

less innocent man. As

the years passed, his name

became known throughout Europe.

Peter the Great of Russia came to pay

his respects, and the Queen of England made

a trip to Dell for the sole purpose of

contemplating the wonders seen

through his microscopes at the request of

the Royal Society. He refuted all kinds of

superstitions, and apart from Robert Boyle, he...

Isaac Newton was the most famous

member of that institution. He lost

his mind with so many honors, not at all,

because to begin with, he already held himself in

very high esteem. His pride knew no

bounds, nor did his humility before the

mystery that surrounded him and

all men. He admired the god of his

country, but his true god was

truth. Here is his profession of faith: "

I am determined not to cling stubbornly

to my ideas, abandoning them as soon as I

find plausible reasons to

do so. As true as this is, my

sole purpose, and to the best of my

ability, is to set the truth before my

eyes and employ the little talent that has been

granted to me in leading the world away from

its old pagan superstitions,

walking in the truth, never abandoning it."

The health of Bne Hawk was

truly surprising. At 80

human years, he still looked firm when

holding the microscope so that his

visitors could look at those famous

creatures, but he liked to drink at

night. What Dutchman? It seems that his

only indisposition was the malaise he

felt in the mornings, natural after

those nights of drinking. He loathed

doctors.

How could they understand the

body's illnesses if they didn't know even a thousandth

of what he knew about how it

was constituted? Consequently,

Job continued to follow his own

strange theories about his ailment.

He knew that blood was full of

tiny globules—he had been the first

to see them—and that these globules had to

pass through the very thin capillaries

to go from the arteries to the veins. He hadn't

discovered them himself in the

tail of a fish. He deduced, then, that the blood

thickened after those nights

of revelry, hindering its passage through

the capillaries. He would manage

to make it more fluid himself. He wrote about this

to the Royal Society

when he was not too sick. The

next morning, he drank many cups of coffee, as

hot as possible, until he broke out in a

sweat. If this remedy didn't make

me recover, neither could the

entire pharmacopoeia of an apothecary. It was the

only thing he had done for years when he

had a fever. This habit of drinking

very hot coffee led him to make

another very curious observation related

to the little animals. Whenever he did this... He was drawn

to spying on a new fact of

nature, for he lived enveloped in

those dramas that unfolded

under the lens of his microscope, like a

child wide-eyed listening to a

fairy tale. He had just read us the same

story of nature,

always finding new aspects in this

living book. So, years after

discovering microbes in his mouth,

one fine morning, amidst

the sweats brought on by his

curative plan of drinking enormous quantities of

coffee, he happened to examine again the

white substance that covered his teeth.

But what had happened? He

found no animal, or rather,

none alive, for he could barely

discern myriad inert bodies and

one or two that moved slowly

as if sick. In the name of all the

saints of the celestial court,

I hope that none of the gentlemen of

the Royal Society think of looking for

things in his mouth, for if he doesn't find them, he

will disprove my

observations. But let's see, the coffee he had just

drunk was so hot that it

almost touched his lips, and the tartar

observed was on his

incisor teeth, exactly where the coffee

had passed. What would he

find if He examined the tartar on his

molars and was greatly surprised to see an

incredible number of tiny creatures in such a

small amount of tartar.

Had he not seen them with his own

eyes, he would never have believed it. He

then proceeded to carry out careful experiments

in test tubes, heating the water with its

minuscule inhabitants to a temperature

slightly higher than that of a hot bath.

Instantly, the

bugs' mad dashes ceased. When the

water cooled, they did not regain their vitality. It was the

hot coffee that had killed the little creatures on

his incisor teeth.

With what pleasure he contemplated them again!

But he felt annoyed and frustrated

because he could not distinguish the heads

or tails of those little animals that

writhed back and forth

without turning with the same speed.

But they must have heads and tails, as well as a

liver, brain, and blood vessels. In his

mind, he returned to his work from

forty years ago when, under his

powerful lenses, he discovered that fleas

and cheese mites, so crude and

simple to the naked eye, possessed a

system as complicated and perfect as that of

humans. But despite his attempts

with his best microscopes, those The

little creatures always appeared as

simple cords or in the form of spheres or

spirals. In view of this, he contented himself

with calculating, in order to communicate to the Royal

Society, what the diameter of the

invisible blood vessels of the

microbes would be.

[Music] Of course, it never even occurred to him to

imply that he had seen them; he was

only amused to amaze

those gentlemen with his

speculations about the incredible

smallness of microbes.

Although Antonio La Ven Hood lacked the

imagination to deduce that those

despicable little creatures could be the

cause of diseases in man, he

managed to demonstrate that those

microscopic beings were capable of devouring and

killing beings much larger than

themselves. He also used to examine the

mussels and crabs that he took from the

canals. He found millions of

embryos inside their mothers and

tried to develop them outside the

maternal body in a vessel with canal water. "

I wonder," he said to himself, "how is it that the

canals are not teeming with mussels,

given the enormous quantity that the

females carry inside them?" Day after

day he was an organ In the vessel of water

that contained the viscous mass of

embryos, observing them with his lenses

to see if they were growing, but what was

happening there? To his astonishment, he saw

the contents of the shells disappear. done by

millions of microbes that

voraciously attacked the mussels

[Music]

life feeds on life it is cruel

but it is the divine will he reflected

for our good undoubtedly because

if these little animals did not exist the

canals would be teeming with mussels

given that each mother carries within her

more than a thousand children as we see

Antonio La Ven Juca accepted and praised

everything like a good son of his time in

that century the researchers did not

yet arrive as

Pastel did later to defy God and to protest

against the inexorable cruelty of

nature towards humanity towards

its children

at the end of 'Avenue Q' of the 80 years and his

teeth loosened as had to

happen even to an organism as

strong as his he did not complain about the

inevitable arrival of the winter of his

life he pulled out a tooth to

examine it with his lenses observing the little

animals he found in the

Swedish root why not study them once more

perhaps he would discover some new detail

that he had inadvertently

missed before when he reached the At 85, his

friends recommended he abandon

his studies to rest. He

frowned and, opening his eyes to a diva,

replied, "

The fruits that ripen in autumn are the

most lasting." At 85, he

considered himself in the autumn of his life.

Benja was quite a spectacle; he

delighted in the exclamations of

admiration from those who peered into

his microscopic world or from those who

received his rambling and

marvelous letters. But they had to be

philosophers and lovers of science; on the other hand, he did

n't like to teach. "No

one has ever been taught," wrote the famous

philosopher Light Knicks, "because if I were to teach

someone, I would have to do it with others;

I would impose a slavery upon myself, and what I

desire is to remain a

free man. But if I don't teach you, the

youth, the

art of making lenses as precise

as yours will disappear from the earth, and the

observation of new little animals will cease."

Light Knicks replied, "

Impressed by my discoveries,

the students and professors of the

University of Leiden hired

three expert

lens polishers to teach classes." And what have been

the results? None. In my opinion, the

purpose of such courses is to

profit by trading in

knowledge or scientific prestige,

which has nothing to do with the

discovery of things hidden from

our eyes. I am convinced that

among a thousand people, not one is

capable of continuing my studies, for that

would require

unlimited time and a great deal of money, not to mention the

dedicated attention required if

something like that is to be achieved. The first

microbe hunter, in 1723, at the age of 91,

on his deathbed, called to his friend

Juliet. He could not raise his hand; his eyes,

once full of animation, were now

dull, and his eyelids were beginning to

seal with the cement of death. "

Vliet, my friend," he murmured, "please have

these two letters

on the table translated and send them to the Royal

Society of Man." In

this way, he fulfilled the promise made 50

years earlier. And as he wrote, he continued

transmitting the letters, saying, "I send to

you, learned gentlemen, the last gift

of my friend, hoping that his

last words will be pleasing to you."

Thus, he crossed the threshold of death

of the first microbe hunter.

Regarding Spice and Sand, which

was much more brilliant about cake, with

greater imagination than Benja,

about Robert Coche, whose work

produced more tangible benefits in

trying to rid humanity of the

torments caused by microbes, and

about many other researchers who today

enjoy far greater fame, but none

of them has been as sincere or as

disconcertingly strict as this one,

with Sergio Dutch, who could well have given them

all lessons in

tripp.

[Music]