Virus and over interpretation

[B. J. Tindall]

Jan Bosselaers wrote:

>Geoff Read wrote:

>> I'm not sure you can separate the origins of virulent and virus, but no
>> matter. Virus the disease agent does come from the Latin word for
>> poison. In 1898 one Professor Beijerinck of Delft, working on tobacco
>> disease, extracted an infectious clear 'liquid'  which he named a virus in
>> the sense of a poison (from Gordon Rattray Taylor's "The Science of
>> Life"). This was the tobacco mosaic virus.

>Indeed, and in full this "poison" was named "virus filtrans" because it
>could pass through filters which would stop bacteria from passing. So
>"virus" was meant to be a Latin word in the beginning.

And Lwoff wrote in 1958
"in AD 50 Cornelius Aulus Celsus produced this remarkable sentence: Rabies
is caused by a virus."
So I guess Celsus was using modern molecular methods and had an electron
microscope. Yes I would agree that the term "virus" was used in the sense
of a "poison" and Beijerinck was describing something which passed through
a filter, so why not use "virus filtrans". However as recently as the 1970s
bacteriologists were using the term "MLO" (mycoplamsa like organism) and
"PPLO" (pleuro-pneumonia like organisms) for bacteria which also passed
through standard filters. Beijerinck, who is one of THE founding figures in
microbiology certainly did not know the nature of his "virus" (= poison).
There is a big difference between correct observation and knowing what is
responsible for what you see. When Pliny described the extraction of
pigments from the Wadi Natrun in Eygpt he was indirectly describing the
extraction of carotenoids from bacteria, but he was a) not aware of the
existence of carotenoids) nor was he aware of the existence of bacteria.
Don't over interpret!
Brian Tindall





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