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Antonie van Leeuwenhoek: Small-town Boy Makes Good, Discovers Gouty Tophi
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One of the thrilling aspects of scientific discovery is that it can come from almost anywhere, and almost anyone. Few individuals exemplify this like Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who, despite having no formal education past the age of 16, went on to become what most consider to be the “Father of Microbiology.”
Van Leeuwenhoek, who was born in Delft in the Dutch Republic in 1632, grew up poor. He started his professional career working in linens, after his meager education had come to an abrupt halt. It is believed that he dabbled in local politics, but then, somehow, an interest in lens-making arose, which drew his attention to a simple microscope that was available at the time. From there, van Leeuwenhoek went on to be the first person to identify gouty tophi, among many other discoveries. His accomplishments earned him induction into the Dutch Royal Society in 1680. Van Leeuwenhoek died in 1723.
Adam J. Brown, MD, of the department of rheumatologic and immunologic disease at the Cleveland Clinic, discussed van Leeuwenhoek’s role in understanding gouty tophi on the Healio Rheuminations podcast. “He was a pioneer of the microscope, but he did not discover it,” he said. “Lots of articles talk about him discovering the microscope, but that is not the case. He was just really adept at using the microscope.”
The microscopes he used to make his discoveries had only one lens, according to Brown. However, there were also compound microscopes with more than one lens available at that time that were used by other scientists. “Even so, he was describing things other scientists had not seen,” Brown said. “He was actually seeing more with a simpler device than people were using in the same era.”
Van Leeuwenhoek comes into the rheumatology story because he was the first to describe gouty crystals under the microscope. “It was in 1679 when he found a person who had tophaceous gout,” Brown said. Leeuwenhoek had obtained samples of the chalky substance from the patient’s elbow or heel. “We are not sure which it was.”
In a letter from July 11, 1679 to Mr. Lambert van Velthuysen, van Leeuwenhoek described what he had seen under the scope:
“I observed the solid matter which to our eyes resembles chalk, and saw to my great astonishment that I was mistaken in my opinion, for it consisted of nothing but long, transparent little particles, many pointed at both ends and about 4 ‘axes’ of the globules in length. I cannot better describe that by supposing that we saw with naked eye pieces from a horse-tail cut to a length of one sixth of an inch . . . In some places the above-mentioned long particles lay in regular order, one next to the other, and not in a mass as if they formed one body, but in a manner in which glands lie.”
Brown put these observations into context. “This was the first time someone looked at tophi and saw crystals,” he said. “He knew it was gout, he knew it was tophi, but he didn’t know what caused gout or what was in tophi. This is the first time someone recognized that there is some crystalline substance.”
Van Leeuwenhoek made the lenses he used to make this discovery, but it was not just the lenses that led to all of those discoveries, according to Brown. “Importantly, the reason he was so good at using these microscopes, compared with other people, was his use of lights,” he said. Obviously, because it was the 17th century, there were no electric lightbulbs. “It is not clear how he was able to manipulate light and get the images he was getting. In fact, he never actually told anybody how he did it.”
However, the results speak for themselves. “The only reason we know that he wasn’t completely full of it was that eventually people were able to see what he was seeing,” Brown said. “But that took a long time.”
Brown stressed that simple curiosity, patience and persistence were the likely keys to van Leeuwenhoek’s accomplishments. “He was eventually inducted into the Dutch Royal Society without having any education, which is unheard of,” he said. “He is most famous for describing bacteria, amoeba and parasites. He drew pictures of them and sent them to the Royal Society.”
Once the Royal Society figured out how to use a microscope as effectively as van Leeuwenhoek, they validated his claims and discoveries. “They realized he was right and inducted him,” Brown said. – by Rob Volansky
References:
Healio Rheuminations podcast:
https://www.healio.com/rheumatology/podcasts/rheuminations/episode-eight
McCarty DJ. Arthritis and Rheumatism. 1970;doi:10.1002/art.1780130408.
For more information:
Adam J. Brown, MD, can be reached at 9500 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44195.
Disclosure: Brown reports no relevant financial disclosures.