How I learned to stop worrying and love germs

Be warned: This article is gross

It's necessart to learn how to live with microbes in harmony.
(Image credit: Cleaning / Alamy Stock Photo)

The 17th-century Dutch scientist Antony van Leeuwenhoek loved looking through his microscope.

Leeuwenhoek first became known for his skill at making lenses — instruments that could magnify objects up to 270 times — and then for what he found when using one to examine a water sample from a nearby lake: thousands of little things dancing everywhere. (These things were actually single-celled protozoa.) Leeuwenhoek's curiosity soon led him to other close-up studies, and to discover even tinier creatures, like the bacteria living in rainwater. He was the first man to see microbes.

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Alexis Boncy is special projects editor for The Week and TheWeek.com. Previously she was the managing editor for the alumni magazine Columbia College Today. She has an M.F.A. from Columbia University's School of the Arts and a B.A. from the University of Virginia.