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Abstract
The word Nostoch was invented by the 15th century scientist, philosopher, and alchemist Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim (Paracelsus) to describe the gelatinous colonies of the ubiquitous terrestrial cyanobacterium Nostoc commune. It is proposed that Nostoch is a play on two words, an Old English word and a German word, which both describe that part of the human anatomy intimately associated with extracellular polysaccharide; Nost hryl and Nasenloch = Nostoch.
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Copyright © 1997 International Union of Microbiological Societies