1765 Spontaneous generation

Spontaneous generation

• Maggots grow in cow pies.
• Tapeworms grow in intestines.
• Without knowing that flies and worms lay eggs
• and that stepping barefoot into feces
• or eating undercooked food
• can pick them up,
• people believed that very small creatures
• were generated spontaneously
• from decaying plant and animal matter.
• People like John Needham asserted
• that a vital principle inhered in such substances
• that spontaneously generated living things.
• Lazzaro Spallanzani tried to prove this,
• sterilizing his samples in sealed flasks,
• and failed.
• Realizing that heating and sealing his samples
• killed anything alive that was already in them
• and protected them from contamination,
• Spallanzani demonstrated the principle of pasteurization
• and scooped Louis Pasteur
• by ninety-five years.

Vital principle

• Invisible parasites
• bacteria, viruses
• too small to see
• infect my body.
• I itch; I cannot help it;
• I become feverish; I grow hungry;
• I eat certain leaves and barks
• and I am cured.
• An idea occurs to me
• and I cannot
• get it out of my head.
• I try to test the idea
• and find that it violates
• a principle of nature.
• Living things inhabit everything
• in the air, land, and sea
• in rocks, in soil,
• in every drop of water.
• Obsesssed,
• I wash my hands
• although they are already clean
• and the water makes my fingers itch.

Miracles

• Seems like miracles
• strangely inhabiting
• everything around us.
• Unidentified energies
• silently empower
• impossible creatures
• too numerous to count.
• Imagination generates reasons
• out of fears.
• Reason generates causes
• out of hopes.
• Surprise generates miracles
• when we can’t see the causes.
• We can’t explain these things.
• If this were pure luck, good or bad,
• it would be time to count our blessings.