page_title: Paramecium
section_title: Historical background
hierarchical_section_title: Paramecium / Historical background
caption_attribution_description: English: A letter containing the earliest identifiable illustration of a Paramecium was published anonymously in Philosophical Transactions, in 1703. John Dolan has identified the probably author as Charles King of Staffordshire.
context_page_description: Paramecium is a genus of unicellular ciliates, commonly studied as a representative of the ciliate group. Paramecia are widespread in freshwater, brackish, and marine environments and are often very abundant in stagnant basins and ponds. Because some species are readily cultivated and easily induced to conjugate and divide, it has been widely used in classrooms and laboratories to study biological processes. Its usefulness as a model organism has caused one ciliate researcher to characterize it as the "white rat" of the phylum Ciliophora.
context_section_description: Paramecia were among the first ciliates to be seen by microscopists, in the late 17th century. They were probably known to the Dutch pioneer of protozoology, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, and were clearly described by his contemporary Christiaan Huygens in a letter of 1678. The earliest known illustration of a Paramecium was published anonymously in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, in 1703.
  In 1718, the French mathematics teacher and microscopist Louis Joblot published a description and illustration of a microscopic poisson (fish), which he discovered in an infusion of oak bark in water. Joblot gave this creature the name "Chausson", or "slipper", and the phrase "slipper animalcule" remained in use as a colloquial epithet for Paramecium, throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. 
  The name "Paramecium" – constructed from the Greek παραμήκης (paramēkēs, "oblong") – was coined in 1752 by the English microscopist John Hill, who applied the name generally to "Animalcules which have no visible limbs or tails, and are of an irregularly oblong figure". In 1773, O. F. Müller, the first researcher to place the genus within the Linnaean system of taxonomy, adopted the name Paramecium, but changed the spelling to Paramœcium. C. G. Ehrenberg, in a major study of the infusoria published in 1838, restored Hill's original spelling for the genus name, and most researchers have followed his lead.
caption: Earliest known illustration of Paramecium
exif: {}