animalcularadj.

1749 Quincy's Pharmacopœia Officinalis (rev. ed.) i. ii. xiii. 221/1 Hence, by analogy, other contagious diseases are likewise suspected to be animalcular.

1765 A. Tucker Light of Nature I. 481 Imagine animalcules to take their rise in measuring from the width of their tail..then reckon by animalcular miles.

1794 S. T. Coleridge Coll. Lett. (1956) I. 89 I was sore afraid, that I had caught the Itch from a Welch Democrat, who..grasped my hand with flesh-bruising Ardour—and I trembled, lest some discontented Citizens of the animalcular Republic should have emigrated.

1849 Times 13 Sept. 7/2 The animalcular theory, for example, attributes the phenomena of cholera to the ravages of microscopic insects.

1888 Med. Era 6 80/1 Dr. Salisbury, in 1873, discovered an animalcular organism which he termed Asthmatos ciliaris, and considered it to be the cause of the disease. This animalcular theory has a few advocates.

1947 Proc. Amer. Philos. Soc. 91 61/2 Daniel Drake, J. K. Mitchell, and Joseph Leidy had participated in the discussion of animalcular origins of disease between 1830 and 1850.

1993 Albion 25 50 He had recently come across a Linnaean dissertation arguing in favour of a theory of animalcular contagion.

1753 Chambers's Cycl. Suppl. (at cited word) Systems of physic, of pathology..founded on the animalcular principles.

1790 W. Smellie Philos. Nat. Hist. 117 The animalcular system..makes the germs, or rudiments of animals, reside in the spermatic animalcules.

1818 W. Newnham Ess. Inversio Uteri 150 If the animalcular theory of Lewenhoëck should engage our consent.

1981 South Atlantic Rev. 46 68 Given Tristram's earlier argument for the animalcular genetics of the Homunculus, the pattern of male supremacy in Shandy Hall has reached its most absurd.