Chapter 1: Nature's Criminals Part 2

People soon realized that there wasn't only one type of parasite, there was a multitude of different kinds. They had discovered that there were visible and invisible parasites! These little bad boys varied in oddities, like some had horns, weird tails, what looked like hair, and some even resembled lizards and little frogs. In 1673, a shopkeeper from Delft put rainwater under a homemade microscope and saw crawling little globs, some with odd shapes and tails. This man was Anton van Leeuwenhoek and he was the first man to visually see bacteria. He put everything from rain water to his own stool under the microscope just to observe these little creatures and the way they move. Many tiny parasites were discovered, but more visible parasites were discovered too.

Leeuwenhoek's Microscope

Even after all of this discovery, scientists still believed that parasites were still generated by the host. People didn't know better and they figured that since the parasites had no way to get into the body, they must have been created by the body. They figured that these parasites had never been out of the body and they had hooks and tails for living in the body, but were not fit to survive outside of it. Scientists found parasites in animal fetus's and all over and animals body, but how in the world would they get in there?

The belief of spontaneous generation contradicted what the bible said, that everything was made by God in a week and nothing could worm its way into being a new organism. Zimmer worded it "If our own blood could spontaneously generate life, what help did it need from God back in the days of Genesis?" (pg. 5) So a new question was raised: Why would God create such creatures, and when were they created? One of my favorite passages from this chapter pertains to this question. Zimmer said "Why did God create parasites? To keep us from being too proud, by reminding us that we were merely dust. How did parasites get into us? They must have been put there by God...Perhaps they were passed down though generations within our bodies to the bodies of our children. Did that mean that Adam, who was created in purest innocence, came into being already loaded with parasites? Maybe the parasites were created inside him after his fall. But wouldn't this be a second creation, an eighth day added on to that first week-"and on the following Monday God created parasites"? Well, then, maybe Adam was greeted with parasites after all, but in Eden parasites were his helpmates... But why should Adam, created not only in innocence but in perfection, need any help at all?"(pg. 5) Now you can see why the people of these times were so confused.