THE FINAL REJECTION OF "SPONTANEOUS GENERATION"

TYNDALL, JOHN.

Spontaneous Generation I (+) Spontaneous Generation II (+) A Combat with an Infective Atmosphere.

8vo. In contemporary black half cloth with gilt lettering to spine. in "Popular Science monthly", no 8. Extremities with light wear, otherwise fine. [Entire volume: Pp. 641-778, 128, 641-777, 386-648].

First printing of Tyndall's famous two-paper series on Spontaneous Generation. The idea was that certain forms such as fleas could arise from inanimate matter such as dust, or that maggots could arise from dead flesh. This idea had been the dominating though for two millenniums until Pasteur in 1859 and Tyndall with the present publication finally laid this theory to rest.

"One might think, then, that the question of spontaneous generation had to be resolved before germ theory could triumphed. It comes as a surprise to discover that germ theory triumphed while the issue of spontaneous generation was still subject to a lively debate. The whole question was only finally solved resolved in 1877, when John Tyndall showed that the outcome of experiments on sealed and heated environments, or on heated environments containing only heated air, depended not on the honesty and good faith, or technical competence and skill, of the experimenter, but on where he happened to conduct the experiment.
Since Tyndall, and only since Tyndall, spontaneous generation experiments can be made to work reliably - but Pasteur and Lister had already brought about a revolution in medicine by claiming (mistakenly as it happens) that spontaneous generation had already been disproved." (Wootton, Bad Medicine).

Order-nr.: 50962