by Effie Moore Salem

Created on: December 06, 2008   Last Updated: April 26, 2010

Bacteriology is the study of bacteria, how it causes disease, how it help the body, and how to use the knowledge to better humanity. The study of bacteria has come a long way since these microorganisms were first discovered in 1674 by Antony Van Leeuwenhoek. He was the most unlikely scientist to make such a discovery but he was, by nature, curious. He was of an entrepreneurial spirit and anything that caught his eye that was unknown to him, set him to wondering why.

By trade he was a fabric merchant but dealt in many other sideline ventures. One of these, the grinding of lens, led the way for his important discovery. Looking at the plaque in his own mouth with the lens he had invented, he discovered the wiggly little particles now known as bacteria. You can read his outstanding, but thoroughly disgusting, descriptions of what he saw on answers.com.

Once he alerted the scientific community to these microbes, the study of bacteria took off rapidly. There are a multitude of bacteria and most of them are good and necessary and help us carry on our daily living. They are, in essence, the workers of our world and are treated, in most instances, as dirty germs that make us sick.

Of course, these small minute live particles of matter do this, but they seldom get the recognition for the good they do. Without bacteria, there would be no wine, beer, cheese and none of the finer things of life we take for granted. Unlike viruses, they are not parasites and are complete and can do their work unhampered by inertness. Too, unlike them, they are subject to being destroyed by heat, other more powerful microbes and by other scientific means.

Although numerous, they fit within three distinct shapes, rod-shaped - bacilli; rounded balls - cocci, or spiral. Bacilli were recognized as distinct bacteria in 1872 by Ferdinand Cohn, a peer of Robert Koch. This particular bacterium is capable of being stained with a purple dye, rendering it easy to detect.

Bacilli

Thus bacilli are Gram-positive, needs oxygen to grow and forms endospores. (The first part of the word endospore designates to the laboratory student that the spore is formed on the inside of the bacilli wall; had the word been exospore it would mean the spore was formed outside the wall of the bacteria.)

It was the Anthrax discoveries by Koch, in 1876 that furthered the cause of bacteriology, in particular the group known as bacillus. This was the first clue that bacteria could also cause disease. The demonstrating agent, Bacillus

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