Spallanzani's heat sterilization experiments
Esterilización por calor contra la generación espontánea
- Date
- 1765 · confidence high
- Place
- Pavia / Reggio Emilia, Italy
- Credited to
- Lazzaro Spallanzani
- People
- 👤 Lazzaro Spallanzani1729–1799
- Field
- Life & health
What was discovered
By boiling broths in sealed flasks he showed that no microbes appeared, refuting Needham. He also demonstrated fertilisation by spermatozoa in amphibians and chemical digestion.
What it led to
- food preservation by heat (Appert, 1810)
- Pasteur's definitive experiments
- artificial insemination
Built on
- Redi's experiment against spontaneous generation1668
- Redi
- Needham-Buffon controversy
Made possible
- Heat sterilization (swan-neck flask and autoclave)1861-1879
- Germ theory (Pasteur)1857-1865
- canning (appertisation)
- autoclave sterilisation