Principles of antibiotic therapy

Although the use of ‘magnifying glasses’ was recorded in the first century AD by Pliny the elder, the forerunner of the modern microscope was only developed in 1590 when a pair of Dutch spectacle makers, Zaccharias Jannsen and his son, discovered that pairing lenses allowed objects to be magnified. Galileo, on hearing of this discovery, experimented and outlined the science of lenses and produced a focusing magnifier. Another Dutchman, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), produced microscopes with up to 270 magnification and as a result was the first to see and describe bacteria.