A Brief History of the Miracle Bacterium - by Corrado Nai

Serratia marcescens, a pathogen with an uncanny resemblance to blood, has had an outsized influence on modern science.

At 1:15 p.m. on Monday, August 8th, 1904, a British physician named M. H. Gordon took some soil he had “richly impregnated with a living emulsion” of the virulent bacterium,1 Serratia marcescens, and sprinkled it near a lamp post in front of the U.K. House of Commons. Gordon knew that was the exact spot Members of Parliament had to cross before their 2 p.m. session. His hope was for the politicians to step on the contaminated ground and spread the bacteria inside the Debating Chamber. Gordon wasn’t executing a terrorist attack. Rather, he had been appointed by a committee to study how germs…

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