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Redi's Experiment
Francesco Redi's experiment refuted spontaneous generation. He placed meat in three jars: one open, one sealed, and one covered with gauze. Maggots appeared only in the open jar, as flies could lay eggs there. This proved maggots came from fly eggs, not the meat. Redi’s work was a milestone in scientific methods, emphasizing observation, experimentation, and challenging dogmatic beliefs. -
Francesco Redi
Francesco Redi was an Italian physician, naturalist, physiologist, and man of letters. He demonstrated that insects do not appear spontaneously, and is therefore considered the founder of helminthology. -
John Needham
John Turberville Needham was an English biologist and Catholic priest, he was born at 1713 and he dead at 1781. In 1745, John Needham performed an experiment: he boiled meat broth to destroy pre-existing organisms and placed it in a container that was not properly sealed. -
Needham’s rebuttal
In 1745, an English clergyman named John Needham said that living things could appear on their own. He did an experiment to prove it. He boiled broth in order to kill the tiny organisms and then poured the broth into containers. After the broth had cooled, he closed the containers.
Later, with small organisms in the broth, he took it as evidence for the reality of spontaneous generation. -
Criticism from Spallanzani
Lazzaro Spallanzani was shure that John Needham experiment was wrong, so he repited the experiment lots of times, finally he discovers that Needham was wrong.
The unic difference in the experiments was that he boiled the broth for longer and the flask was healed during the whole process. -
Lazzaro Spallanzani
Lazzaro Spallanzani was a naturalist and Catholic priest who served as professor of physics and mathematics at the University of Reggio Emilia in 1757, and of logic, Greek and metaphysics in Modena. He was also director of the Natural History Museum of Pavia, Italy. -
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur was a French chemist and microbiologist, he also was a member of the French Academy. Demonstrating the microbiological nature of fermentation and of many animal and human diseases. -
Pasteur puts spontaneous generation to rest
Louis Pasteur did another time the experiment, but this time he left the bottle opened to the air.
He has put broth in different type of bottle that has a long, curved neck pointing down. For a whole year, he saw no living things in the broth. Later, he broke the top of the bottle so air and particles could get inside. After a few days, he saw life in the broth. He concluded that the living things came from particles in the air, not from a "life force."