Researched
Redi refutes maggots from meat
Francesco Redi showed in 1668 that maggots come from flies' eggs, not from rotting meat: the first controlled test of spontaneous generation.
Open in the interactive tree →Redi set meat in open jars and in jars covered with gauze; maggots appeared only where flies could lay eggs. The microscope then raised the question again for microbes, and Pasteur settled it in the 1860s.
Prerequisites
- Aristotle's natural history~340 BC
- Scientific Method~1600-1620
Unlocks
- Germ theory1861Redi's 1668 test began the experimental case that life comes only from life
Sources
More in Biology & Genetics · Middle Ages & Renaissance
- Microscope1665