Germ theory of disease

The first application of chlorine in potable water was introduced in the 1830s for taste and odor control, at that time diseases were thought to be spread by odors. It was not until the 1890s and the advent of the germ theory of disease that the importance of disinfection in potable water was understood. Chlorination was first introduced on a practical scale in 1908 and then became a common practice. 

Of critical importance was the work of Louis Pasteur in France, Robert Koch in Germany, and Joseph Lister in England in the nineteenth century that established the germ theory of disease, a demonstration that took an amazing amount of time to catch on. Too many people, including scientists, do not understand that some fraction of what they know is just not so. People hold onto their misinformation with remarkable tenacity, retarding the acceptance of new knowledge. 

In the 1860s, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) confirmed the germ theory of disease with his discovery of bacteria. This led to the discovery of the antiseptic properties of phenol and related compounds, which, as discussed in Chapter 12, could be used to prevent bacterial infection. The first major advance toward curing bacterial diseases was not made until the 1930s, however, when sulfur-containing compounds known as sulfa drugs were developed. Next came penicillin,... 

The sun-centered solar system Warm-bloodedness in dinosaurs The germ-theory of disease Continental drift... 

Louis Pasteur studied chirality in the 1840s by separating a mixture of two chiral molecules. His greater contribution was in biology for discovering the germ theory of disease. 

On many occasions, Lenin and his colleagues took the threat of contamination more literally and spoke in metaphors drawn from the science of hygiene and the germ theory of disease. Thus it became possible to talk of petit-bourgeois bacilli and "infection. The shift in imagery was not far-fetched, for Lenin did want to keep the party in an environment that was as sterile and germ-free as possible lest the party contract one of the many diseases lurking outside. ... 

The agents responsible for these great losses of life were a complete mystery. From ancient times, people had speculated about emanations (miasmata) of disease arising from swampy places (like mist) and from corpses. This bad air or mal aria was associated with the fevers and worse conditions that were prevalent in marshy places. In 1546, the Italian physician and poet Girolamo Fracastoro proposed what we should now term the germ theory of disease when he wrote in his treatise entitled De Contagione ... 

Pasteur was by now aware of these studies and was able to overcome this scepticism by some clever experimentation. He added one drop of infected serum to sterilised urine, allowed the bacilli to multiply and then added one drop of this urine to another sample of sterilised urine. After 100 transfers, the anthrax bacilli retained the entire potency present in the initial drop of blood serum, and the germ theory of disease was thus confirmed. 

Another extensive application is in the sterilisation of water. As early as 1886 experiments were carried out on the c onisation of water to effect the removal of organic matter and bacteria. Eight years previously Pasteur had introduced his germ theory of disease and the danger of transmitting diseases such as typhoid and cholera by vitiated waters was beginning to be realised. In 1885 Percy Frankland had shown that almost all the bacterial content of water... 

The basic premise of this book is that we can create a molecular theory of mental illness, analogous to the germ theory of disease. Molecular imaging makes it possible to search for patterns in the chemical processes in the brain that are related to violence and other forms of mental illness, involving hormones, neurotransmitters, neuroreceptors, reuptake sites, ions, peptides, and proteins. 

Pasteur went on to suggest that human and animal diseases might also be caused by such microorganisms, and he formulated the germ theory of disease. To prove his theory, he showed that anthrax was caused by a bacterium that was transferred from animal to animal. But even more exciting was his observation that animals injected with a weakened form of the... 

Germ theory of disease Theory that irticro-organisms (germs) can invade other organisms and cause disease. 

Pasteurization (Louis Pasteur) Pasteur s germ theory of disease leads him to develop a method of applying heat to milk products in order to kill harmful bacteria. He goes on to develop vaccines for rabies, anthrax, and chicken cholera (1867-1885). 

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