What is the meaning of the word virus?

Step-by-step solution

Virus means venom or poisonous fluid. Dmitri Ivanowsky (1892) recognised certain microbes as causal organism of the mosaic disease of tobacco. These were found to be smaller than bacteria because they passed through bacteria-proof filters. M.W. Beijerinek(1898) demonstrated that the extract of the infected plants of tobacco could cause infection in healthy plants and named the new pathogen “virus” and called the fluid as Contagium vivum fluidum (infectious living fluid). W.M. Stanley (1935) showed that viruses coul