Question

The experiment to show the production of mice in 21 days from dirty shirt placed in contact with kernels of wheat was carried out by?
A. Francesco Redi
B. Jean Baptiste Van Helmont
C. Aristotle
D. Louis Pasteur

Answer 1

The spontaneous generation theory held that living creatures could emerge from non-living matter and that such processes were prevalent and proper. Aristotle concisely synthesized the doctrine of spontaneous generation.

Step by step answer: In the XVII century, the first experiments to prove the theory of the spontaneous generation were carried out and a doctor named Jean Baptiste Van Helmont announced that he had carried out a unique experiment, he put a dirty shirt together with some wheat and, according to him, 21 days after that, mice were born. The sweat in the shirt was the active element that brought life to the inert matter, as per him.
Hence, the correct answer is Option B
Additional Information:
-Francesco Redi was one of the first scientists to disprove spontaneous generation. He went on to show that when placed on rotting meat in a sealed jar, dead maggots or flies would not create new flies, whereas live maggots or flies would. The experiment of Redi simply but effectively demonstrates that life is necessary for life to be produced.
-Louis Pasteur disapproved of spontaneous generation theory. He heated an infusion sealed in an S-shaped vessel or "Swan neck," let it cool down, and then broke the tip of the vessel. This permitted fresh air to enter, but the bend of the neck trapped any particulate matter. And though it had access to air, the culture did not decay. Pasteur again heated the sealed flask to answer the objection that some vital element in the culture itself had been destroyed, but this time he broke the neck above the bend so that air could enter freely. The culture putrefied, which showed that the source of putrefaction was outside the culture and not spontaneously generated within the culture.

Note: Jan Baptista van Helmont (1580-1644) partially discovered the process of photosynthesis. He grew a willow tree in a weighed amount of soil. After five years, he discovered that the willow tree weighed about 74 kg more than it did at the start, and concluded that the extra plant material had come from the water alone.