Prescott's Microbiology 8th Edition by Joanne Willey, Linda Sherwood, Christopher J. Woolverton, Lansing Prescott, John Harley, Donald Klein

Exercise 2

Why was the belief in spontaneous generation an obstacle to the development of microbiology as a scientific discipline?

Step 1 of 2

The idea of spontaneous generation is that life can arise from non-living substances. Francesco Redi, an Italian physician, completed an experiment that countered spontaneous generation. He demonstrated that when flies are allowed to lay their eggs on meat, maggots develop. If the meat is protected from the flies, maggots did not appear on the meat. This showed that maggots did not spontaneous generate on decaying meat.