"Mr. Clark, I'm afraid I have bad news," the doctor told his anxious patient. "You only have six months to live."
The man sat in stunned silence for several minutes. Regaining his composure, he apologetically announced that he had no medical insurance. "I can't possibly pay you in that time," he said.
"OK," the doctor said. "let's make it nine months."
Richard Julius PetriBorn 31 May 1852; died 20 Dec 1921 at age 69.German physician and bacteriologist, remembered for his name given to the Petri dish. This 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. Petri developed it for a technique for cloning bacterial strains using an agar slope and sub-culturing onto his dish, recognizing different bacterial colonies and again sub-culturing. He was in his later days a rather vain, overweight man, who dressed in the uniform of chief army doctor whenever the opportunity presented itself. One observer remarked that the sash around his protuberant abdomen reminded him of the equator around the globe.« |
