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The Microbial World: Surprising and Stunning |
Chapter: 1
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Like Eels Swimming in Water Although van Leeuwenhoek is remembered for his discoveries in microbiology, his reports concerning the anatomy and physiology of sperm cells endear him to instructors of anatomy and physiology. Shortly after his famous letter to the Royal Society describing microorganisms, van Leeuwenhoek penned the following: "I have divers times examined semen from a healthy man … and I have seen so great a number of living animals in it that sometimes more than a thousand were moving about in an amount of material the size of a grain of sand. Their bodies, which were round, were furnished with a thin tail and moved forward owing to the motion of their tails like that of an eel swimming in water."
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