All in a Drop by Lori Alexander
Author:Lori Alexander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HMH Books
yeast
Antony’s research methods are extremely precise. He cuts his samples into paper-thin pieces using only his shaving razor. While other scientists look at the outsides of seeds, plants, and insects, Antony goes beyond the surface. He learns how hair grows, how muscles contract, how eyes focus, and how bones and teeth are formed. He pricks his own thumb with a needle to examine a sample of blood. He studies arteries, veins, and capillaries to understand how blood circulates through the body. He learns that little animals are found in water and mouths and many other places, too. Antony watches patiently, thinks deeply, and reports carefully. He separates observable facts from old beliefs. He gains the respect of scientists. He’s even awarded a medal. But Antony does not care about fame or money. He writes, “My work, which I’ve done for many a long year, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in me more than most other men.”
He writes letters to the Royal Society until he is ninety years old. One of his last letters contains information about a pain Antony is feeling in his chest. His doctors have diagnosed him with a heart problem. But he is sure the doctors are wrong! The pain he feels is in his diaphragm, the area under his lungs. When he wheezes and coughs, a finger on his pulse tells him his heart rate is not changing. Antony does some research on the diaphragms of sheep and oxen. He writes that a blockage of blood flow to the diaphragm is the cause of the strange spasms in his chest. He is right. In time, doctors will call this condition Leeuwenhoek’s disease.
Still ill, Antony continues his work with microscopes. An employee of the United East India Company, a trading company that sails from the Netherlands to places like China and India, needs to know if there is any gold in a small sample of sand he has carried from the island of Sumatra. Antony will find the answer. Even during the last days of his life, when he is confined to his bed and is too weak to write, Antony’s mind is still sharp. He asks a friend to put some final observations down on paper. Two days later, August 26, 1723, Antony dies.
Antony van Leeuwenhoek is the first person to see most of what he has viewed in his microscopes over his fifty-year career. That he was completely self-taught makes his accomplishments all the more impressive. Antony’s work opens eyes, and minds, to hidden worlds.
Worlds we can all wonder at.
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