The Tools Fighting Against Plague: From Leeuwenhoek's Microscope to Röntgen's X-rays

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]It hunted humans for 3,000 years, never left a single clue. It once swept through streets.

[00:00:06]People thought it was a curse in the air or punishment from the sky.

[00:00:12]Then a group of crazy people showed up.

[00:00:14]They stopped looking at the sky.

[00:00:16]They stared at water drops, corpses, >> [music] >> blood.

[00:00:20]This is a journey of the senses.

[00:00:22]The 1600s, plague was everywhere.

[00:00:26]No one thought the cure [music] was hiding inside a lens.

[00:00:29]Then came Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a cloth merchant from Delft, Holland.

[00:00:34]At first he used magnifying [music] glasses to check fabric fibers.

[00:00:39]But this cloth seller became obsessed with grinding [music] lenses.

[00:00:45]Others used compound microscopes.

[00:00:48]But he didn't follow that path.

[00:00:50]He made single tiny lenses >> [music] >> as small as a pinhole.

[00:00:53]Mounted them in brass, turned a screw to adjust [music] distance.

[00:00:58]His tool looked like a simple workshop toy.

[00:01:01]But it gave him vision beyond that era.

[00:01:04]1674, a drop of clear rainwater exploded [music] under his lens.

[00:01:09]Tiny living things were swimming, spinning, darting around.

[00:01:15]Leeuwenhoek wrote to the Royal Society, "There are animals in water, alive."

[00:01:20]But the reply was, "What is this crazy cloth seller talking about?"

[00:01:24]A man who knew no Latin, no titles, claiming to have found life in water?

[00:01:30]To elite scholars, this was peasant nonsense.

[00:01:34]But Leeuwenhoek didn't stop.

[00:01:36]He sent over 200 letters.

[00:01:37]Bacteria from tooth scrapings, >> [music] >> sperm cells, red blood cells.

[00:01:43]His stubborn curiosity forced open the doors of top science.

[00:01:48]Finally, the Royal Society sent someone to verify.

[00:01:52]They admitted he was right.

[00:01:54]In 1680, Leeuwenhoek was elected [music] as a member.

[00:01:59]Sadly, for 80 years after that, medicine still believed plague was bad body fluids or poison air.

[00:02:06]Humans had seen microscopic life, but didn't know how it got into the body, how it made people sick and die.

[00:02:15]Then came Morgagni, Italian anatomist.

[00:02:19]He picked up the sword.

[00:02:20]The scalpel became a tool to interrogate death.

[00:02:24]Morgagni was cold and tough.

[00:02:26]He did something hardcore. He dissected about 700 bodies.

[00:02:31]He matched each patient's symptoms with the damage on their organs. Bubonic plague wasn't a black cloud.

[00:02:37]It made lymph nodes swell in the groin, armpits, neck.

[00:02:41]It left traces in the lymphatic system.

[00:02:44]Pneumonia wasn't bad air.

[00:02:46]Severe cases filled the air sacs with fluid.

[00:02:49]The lungs turned heavy, solid, like liver.

[00:02:53]1761, he published The Seats and Causes of Disease.

[00:02:58]He told the world, "Disease has a physical address inside the body."

[00:03:02]The scalpel cut through the fog of mysticism.

[00:03:05]But knowing where disease sits didn't mean doctors could save lives.

[00:03:09]Then cholera came.

[00:03:10]Doctors still had no answers.

[00:03:13]The plague again forced human to the corner.

[00:03:16]1832, cholera swept through Edinburgh.

[00:03:20]The toxin opened the body's valves.

[00:03:22]Water and salt poured out.

[00:03:24]Blood turned thick.

[00:03:26]Humans tried to fight directly inside the body without [music] cutting it open, using chemistry.

[00:03:32]Scottish doctor Thomas Latta read a report.

[00:03:35]Cholera patients [music] had lost all their salt and water.

[00:03:39]He had a thought that seemed like blasphemy.

[00:03:42]If things are lost, why not pour them back into the veins?

[00:03:47]His first attempts failed badly. He injected pure water.

[00:03:51]Then patients' red blood cells burst like balloons.

[00:03:55]He quickly realized body fluids are salty, sweat, tears, blood, all salty.

[00:04:03]He added [music] a pinch of salt to the water trying to copy the body's recipe.

[00:04:08]1832, [music] he injected this simple salt water into a dying patient.

[00:04:14]A miracle happened.

[00:04:16]Patients who were half dead came back to life.

[00:04:19]Humans, for the first time, used chemistry [music] to turn the dial of life at the edge of death.

[00:04:27]This breakthrough got [music] buried for 50 years because no one knew about sterile technique.

[00:04:32]But Latta's work became the start of modern intensive care.

[00:04:37]Still, the inside of the body stayed a black box.

[00:04:40]>> [music] >> Facing TB in the lungs, doctors could only guess.

[00:04:44]The invisible virus was a dead end.

[00:04:47]Then physics handed medicine a special key.

[00:04:50]November 8th, 1895, Würzburg, Germany.

[00:04:55]Röntgen wrapped a Crookes tube tightly in black cardboard.

[00:04:59]No light could escape.

[00:05:01]He was about to finish work.

[00:05:03]In the dark corner, a screen coated with fluorescent material suddenly glowed.

[00:05:08]>> [music] >> This meant a type of ray never seen before was passing through the cardboard, through space, grabbing that screen [music] in the dark.

[00:05:18]He named this ray as X.

[00:05:20]He asked his wife to put hand over [music] a plate.

[00:05:23]The image came out.

[00:05:25]Anna saw the outline of her finger bones. She cried out, "I see my death."

[00:05:30]>> [music] >> That wasn't death.

[00:05:32]It's the first time humans saw the inside of a living body without cutting it open.

[00:05:37]This changed everything.

[00:05:39]Public health went from waiting to [music] actively screening.

[00:05:43]With large-scale chest X-rays, TB could [music] no longer hide.

[00:05:48]1901, the Royal Swedish Academy gave Röntgen the first Nobel Prize in Physics.

[00:05:54]Not just for a physics discovery.

[00:05:56]It was the greatest [music] cross-discipline rescue in science history.

[00:06:01]Physics became the sharpest sword for fighting against plague.

[00:06:06]From Leeuwenhoek's [music] microscope to Röntgen's X-rays, humans stumbled in the dark for 200 [music] years.

[00:06:13]From X-rays to penicillin, we took 40 years.

[00:06:17]From antibiotics to the human genome map, only 30 years. [music] Tools are evolving faster than ever.

[00:06:25]Today, when a new epidemic appears, >> [music] >> we no longer wait for long dissections or lucky accidents.

[00:06:32]With high-throughput sequencing, we can decode a virus's DNA in days.

[00:06:38]With AI, we can screen hundreds of millions of molecules for a cure in hours.

[00:06:44]And the mRNA [music] technology even cuts the time for vaccine development from decades to days.

[00:06:50]Looking back 300 years inside all those cold tools, there is a restless [music] soul that refused to give up.

[00:06:58]As long as tools keep evolving, as long [music] as curiosity doesn't die, the battle between humans and plague will never end in darkness.

[00:07:08]>> [music]