Five Quarts_ A Personal and Natural History of Blood - Bill Hayes [36]
At the same time the Dutch artist Jan Vermeer was putting finishing touches on his last great painting, Allegory of Faith, his lifelong friend, the naturalist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), was in a nearby studio quietly discovering a new universe, one of previously unimagined marvels—that of microscopic life. Using a small microscope of his own design, he was the first person to observe, draw, and describe what he called “very little animals” (now known as microorganisms), including the bacteria swimming in human saliva, the protozoans in pond water, and the sperm cells in semen. Likewise, he discovered red blood cells, an accomplishment that changed the way scientists regarded the blood, transforming it from a simple fluid imbued with unseen spirits and qualities to one of burgeoning complexity. In addition, Leeuwenhoek (commonly pronounced LAY-when-hook) contributed to the understanding of capillaries, the newly discovered vessels bridging arteries and veins, and documented similarly intricate structures in the roots, stems, and leaves of plants. He is revered today as a father of multiple disciplines: microscopy, microbiology, botany, and hematology.
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek
To fully appreciate these achievements, however, one needs to know about Leeuwenhoek’s humble beginnings. Imagine, if you will, someone like the owner of your neighborhood dry cleaner, the polite but taciturn man whose tidy little shop you patronize now and then. He is a stocky fellow with blunt features—bulging, heavy-lidded eyes, a bulbous nose. You’ve heard that he’s a widower who has also lost several children to illness, which may account for his sad air. His one surviving child, a daughter, helps him in the shop, which does modest business. To make ends meet, however, he must do janitorial work on the side. You’ve scarcely ever seen him out strolling the neighborhood. He and his daughter live in the flat right above the shop, where, word has it, he spends every moment of his spare time tinkering, always tinkering. Late at night you may’ve glimpsed his silhouette against the upstairs drapes. This is a snapshot from the early 1670s of the life of Leeuwenhoek: a curious, hardworking man, an accidental scientist.
Born in Delft in 1632, just a week before Vermeer, Antoni lost his father, a basket maker, at five years old, and his mother at age eleven. At sixteen he moved to Amsterdam to apprentice in the cloth trade. With scant education to speak of and knowing no language but his native Dutch, he did have an ability that served him well—a gift for mathematics. He returned to Delft and opened a fabric shop in 1654, the same year he married his first wife, Barbara. The next dozen years took a heavy emotional toll on Antoni. Only one of his five children survived past age two—his daughter Maria—and Barbara died in 1666. Shortly thereafter, he began experimenting with microscopes, out of curiosity’s sake, to be sure, and perhaps also, it occurs to me, as a way to fill the lonely hours of the night. Keeping busy may have also helped. He had side jobs as a land surveyor and wine assayer, and he continued at his long-term post as chamberlain (a glorified janitor) for an office of local sheriffs.
In hindsight, it appears that everything Leeuwenhoek lacked—formal education, professional ties, personal fortune—worked to his benefit as a scientist. When he wished to look through a microscope, he had to construct his own since he couldn’t afford one. He even learned how to blow glass and, in the process, became a master at grinding lenses. Lacking a sophisticated vocabulary and being “quite a stranger to letters,” as one colleague later wrote, Leeuwenhoek had to invent