Date of Award
9-1924
Degree Type
Bachelors Essay
Degree Name
Bachelor of Science (BS)
Department
Biological Sciences
Abstract
Stand where you choose some calm night and look up into the great dome of the sky. Realize that those countless stars, once believed to regulate our destinies, have been proven by science to be other worlds more or less like ours. Let your thoughts wander on to objects near at hand. You see the rocks and soil and plants as did mankind for ages back; but where they not so long back saw nought else, you see rocks breaking into fertile soil and realize that minute living beings are responsible. You have come to understand that all the nitrogen compounds in existence, and therefore all vegetable and ultimately all animal foodstuff, are the result of the ability of these unicellular organisms- bacteria - to fix the free nitrogen of the air. We are told by scientists that there are seven millions of bacteria to the gram of normal soil, and yet the unaided eye sees none of these. We know that besides these bacteria that work for our welfare and for the good of all plant and animal life, there are those micro-organisms which destroy life by producing disease.
Recommended Citation
Steinbrecher, Matilda Mary, "Scientific Discoveries Concerned with Pathogenic Micro-Organisms" (1924). Bachelors’ Theses. 1063.
https://epublications.marquette.edu/bachelor_essays/1063
Comments
Written to fulfill the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science in the College ·of Liberal Arts of Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.