Human interactions with microbes
Human interactions with microbes include both practical and symbolic uses of microbes, and negative interactions in the form of human, domestic animal, and crop diseases.
Grapes being trodden to extract the juice and fermented to wine in storage jars. Tomb of Nakht, 18th dynasty, Thebes, Ancient Egypt
Calendar from a Medieval book of hours: the month of December, showing a baker putting bread into the oven. c. 1490–1500
An early Penicillin bioreactor, from 1957, now in the Science Museum, London
Scientists working with Class III cabinets at the U.S. Biological Warfare Laboratories, Camp Detrick, Maryland, in the 1940s
A microorganism, or microbe, is an organism of microscopic size, which may exist in its single-celled form or as a colony of cells.
A cluster of Escherichia coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times
Mahavira postulated the existence of microscopic creatures in the 6th century BC
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was the first to study microscopic organisms.
Lazzaro Spallanzani showed that boiling a broth stopped it from decaying.