biology/history thing...?

Question

does anybody know what Anton van Leeuwenhoek discovered in the 1700’s? And why did scientists speculate about this information at the time?

Answer 1

Boy - is this a good question. I talk about this in my world history class (college). Leeuwenhoek saw bacteria (1676) and sperm (1677); yet, no one figured out what they really were until ~ 200 years later.
Why????
Not much imagination?
Little original thought?
Few people with the time to investigate?
Sad, how slow the progress was in those times.
Bacteria could be seen for two centuries before anyone figured out they cause disease. That occurred in the latter 1800s with Pasteur, Koch, and Lister.