History
The method is named after its inventor, the Danish scientist Hans Christian Gram (1850–1938), who developed the technique while working with Carl Friedländer in the morgue of the city hospital in Berlin. Gram devised his technique not for the purpose of distinguishing one type of bacterium from another but to enable bacteria to be seen more readily in stained sections of lung tissue. He published his method in 1884, and included in his short report the observation that the Typhus bacillus did not retain the stain.
Read more about this topic: Gram Staining
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“The history of reform is always identical; it is the comparison of the idea with the fact. Our modes of living are not agreeable to our imagination. We suspect they are unworthy. We arraign our daily employments.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)