- A dictionary of medical eponyms

Petri dish

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The Petri dish is one of the most universally used pieces of equipment in bacteriological laboratories. It is a shallow, cylindrical dish made of plastic or glass with a cover, used for tissue cultures and to hold solid media for culturing and sub-culturing bacteria. The monument to Koch in Berlin shows him carrying a Petri dish.

A similar dish was described by André Victor Cornil (1837-1908) and Victor Babès (1854-1926), and by Nicati and Rietsch. Both descriptions in 1885.

Bibliography

  • A. V. Cornil, V. Babès:
    Les bactéres et leur rôle dans l’anatomie et l’histologie pathologiques des maladies infectieuses.
    1 volume and Atlas. Paris, F. Alcan, 1885.
  • Nicati, Rietsch, in:
    Archives de physiologie normale et pathologique, Paris, 1885: 6: 72.
  • J. R. Petri:
    Eine kleine Modification des Koch’schen Plattenverfahrens.
    Centralblatt für Bakteriologie, Berlin, 1887, 1: 279-280.

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