Life and

40 The origin of life
spontaneous generation of intestinal worms and other complex organisms). But
Mantegazza’s emphasis was strongly on microscopic work (“micrography”), as he
reported some of his own experiments performed with a variety of decoctions,
coming to a cautiously positive result for the existence of heterogenesis: the
quantity of microbes found after incubation would make it inconceivable to
assume that an equivalent number of “germs” had been present in the carefully
limited amount of air enclosed with the liquid. As for possible contamination in
the process of observation, the generally accepted time it took for active
organisms to develop from airborne germs was far longer than the brief moment
his procedures took after breaking the seal of the flasks. 127
Twelve years and several voyages across Europe and Argentina later,
Mantegazza had become a prominent “effective member” of the Lombard
Institute and a respected professor of pathology at the University of Pavia
(Landucci 1996b:2797). But the battle over spontaneous generation had not lost
his attention; he and his colleagues, notably Balsamo Crivelli, Panceri, Maggi, and
Eusebio Oehl, closely followed and commented on the French Academy debate
raging between Pasteur, Pouchet, and Donné. 128 At the regular meeting of the
Istituto Lombardo on 7 January, 1864, Mantegazza proposed the creation of a
commission dedicated to the study of heterogenesis, which is to say the
spontaneous generation of microscopic organisms from lifeless, decomposed
organic matter, rather than from inorganic substances (which would generally be
called “abiogenesis”). The published minutes of the meeting record a detailed
response by the physicist Giovanni Cantoni, who reminded the audience of
[Marcellin] Berthelot’s chemical researches, suggesting that Pasteur’s “diligent
experiments” had been lacking in providing the necessary “conditions of
temperature, humidity, electricity, etc.” to allow for the generation of life (in
Mantegazza 1864a:14). Finally, his naturalist colleague, Giuseppe Balsamo Crivelli,
concurred citing botanical work by [Friedrich Traugott] Kützing (1807-1893), who
had found distinctive, newly formed algae in the organic films formed on
infusions prepared from animal as well as plant material, and the work Kützing
and Hermann Schaaffhausen had done on the metamorphoses of unicellular
127 Although academic naturalists in Northern Italy tended to follow developments beyond the
Alps with particular attention, Mantegazza’s convictions were not informed by the
“autochthonous generation” debate, conducted during this period especially by German
scholars such as Haeckel’s teacher, Johannes Müller (1801-1858), Hermann Burmeister (1807-
1892), and Darwin’s translators and collaborators Heinrich Bronn (1800-1862) and Carl Vogt
(1817-1895) (Rupke 2006, Amrein & Nickelsen 2008). Mantegazza discussed current
microcreation, and after reading The Origin, he became one of the most convinced followers of
Darwin’s theories of descent and selection, alongside Giovanni Canestrini (Pancaldi
1983/1991).
128 On the French debate, see Latour [1984] 2001, Geison 1995, Roll-Hansen 1998, Harris 2002.
Though Alfred Donné is hardly mentioned in recent studies of the Pasteur-Pouchet debate, his
contributions were extensively commented by members of the Pavia group.