Excerpt from The Principles of Bacteriology: A Practical Manual for Students and Physicians Antony van Leeuwenhoek, the first to describe the bodies now recognized as bacteria, was born at Delft, in Holland, in 1632. He was not considered a man of liberal education, having been during his early years an apprentice to a linendraper. During his apprenticeship he learned the art of lens-grinding, in which he became so proficient that he eventually perfected a simple lens by means of which he was enabled to see objects of much smaller dimensions than any hitherto seen with the best compound microscopes in existence at that date. At the time of his discoveries he was following the trade of linendraper in Amsterdam. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.