How Did Louis Pasteur Contribute To The Germ Theory Of Disease

Dr. Joseph Lister was able to reintroduce cleaniness to the medical field. He used carbolic acid to dress a wound to reduce the rate of infection. This relates to Louis Pasteur because the both of them believed in microbes being the reason for disease so they enforce washing your hands and boiling instruments.

In 1854 Louis Pasteur became a professor of chemistry at Lille. Shortly after, he became interested in fermentation. This was very helpful since alcohol making was a huge industry there. His interest in fermentation resulted in Louis developing many other interests. “In 1857 he jumped around from chemistry, biology then to medicine (Miller, 2002).” In 1860 he discovered pasteurization to kill bacteria in many food and beverages. This made a huge impact on the world. With pasteurization there would now be fewer illnesses due to people ingesting bacteria and parasites.

“Louis Pasteur – Germ Theory of Disease” Inventors About. Com. 2014. Retrieved on January 13 2014 from Biography.com: http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventors/a/Louis_Pasteur.htm

During the era, people were all living in the same shelter, which allowed germs and diseases to be transmitted. the people were misinformed or lack the knowledge about the hygiene; they thought that being dirty was the road to wealth. Everybody perspective were the same, the rich, and the poor, they all believe that having their face all dirtied up and their teeth unclean were signs of wealth. Until, Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) brought up his Germ theory of disease to the society. Louis’ ideas were well-accepted after 20 years of research. His theory suggested that there is a “ specific disease were caused by a living organism called gems, and that those organism could be controlled in people as well as in beer, wine, and milk (Mckay et al., 2012). Soon after the discovery, the Louis’ theory was implanted in to hospital and schools to find new information for later prevention.

Lister “believed that sepsis was caused by a pollen like dust” (Cartwright) and his goal was to try to eliminate contact from the pollen like dust from surgery procedures. He learned from Louis Pasteur that this pollen like dust was micro-organisms and that they caused infections in patients. Lister decided that he was going to “eliminate contact of micro-organisms by exposing them to strong chemicals” (Cartwright). He ended up “finding a chemical called carbolic acid, which had been used to clean sewers and now was being used as a wound dressing to cover the wound and reduce the rate of infection” (Wilson). “In 1865, he tried the carbolic acid by putting it on a serious wound of a young boy, and in six weeks, he was completely healed because there was no infection” (The Famous People). This result led to Lister instructing other surgeons to wash their hands and instruments with carbolic acid to promote cleanliness and prevent infection. Due to this practice, “from 1865 to 1869, surgical mortality fell from 45 to 15 percent” (Cartwright and Biography.com Editors). This statistic clearly indicates that the carbolic acid helps prevent infection and mortality and that Lister was correct in his instructing of others to wash their hands and instruments frequently. Before Lister came up with this discovery, people believed that “infection was spread from bad air in the environment” (Hagy). Because people believed that infection was spread

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek is considered the “Father of Microbiology.” He was passionate about lens grinding and could adjust light extremely well. He developed a compound microscope that could magnify up to 200x. He had a great curiosity, yearning to look at everything he could through a microscope. He looked at pond water using his strongest objective lens to find tiny living things. This resulted in his

Epidemics of the 19th century were faced without the improved medical technologies that made the 20th and 21st-century epidemics rare and less lethal. It was in the 18th century that micro-organisms (viruses and bacteria) were discovered, but it was not until the late 19th century that the experiments of Lazzaro Spallanzani and Louis Pasteur disagreed with the spontaneous generation argument conclusively, crediting the germ theory and Robert Koch 's discovery of micro-organisms as the cause of disease transmission. Therefore, throughout the majority of the 19th century, there was only the most basic, understanding of the causes, amelioration and treatment of epidemic disease.

Louis Pasteur devised an experiment that would cure the rabies disease. Louis Pasteur experimented on a boy who was afflicted with the fatal disease. Louis Pasteur injected a vaccine, composed of ground up spinal cords from dead rabid dogs, into the afflicted patient, Andre. Every day, for three months, Louis Pasteur injected his patient with the vaccine until the boy no longer showed signs of rabies.

Louis Pasteur was a scientist. He led many scientific discoveries particularly in the study of germs and living organisms. It is through the work of Pasteur that we know to wash our hands to prevent that spread of germs, that medical instruments need to be sterilized, and his research on germ theory led to the development of antibiotics. His initial motivation was a love of science, but his research and life events led him to ask important science questions that begged to be answered. After his initial research on crystallization and how polarized light passed through them he became associated with another scientist named Biot. It was after testing Pasteur’s theories that the two became good friends and colleagues. Pasteur’s work into the study of disease and vaccination was further spurred on when two of his daughters died of typhoid.

Louis Pasteur's discovery of the relationship between germ and disease was only the beginning to developping a permanent solution. The theory led to the realization that handwashing helps prevent the spread of disease and disinfection can eliminate germs. Disinfection and handwashing affected humanity because the rates of infectious disease began to decline and epidemics lasted for a shorter time spand and overall mortality decreased as a result. The introduction of the theory affected how humanity viewed the human body. People began to believe that dirt contained microorganisms and could cause an infection, which lead to bathing frequently. Alongside his discovery were his inventions, for example the machine used to screen and detect silkworm eggs which saved the European silk industry and helped prevent silkworm

Louis Pasteur began his discoveries in the late 1800’s by discovering asymmetry as a sign of life. While studying fermentation processes, he discovered that yeast itself was a living process. Pasteur then found how to observe microorganisms, by isolating and providing a growth medium, impacting the future of biotechnology. His discoveries provided the future of wine, beer, vinegar and dairy industries. Pasteur wondered why milk and meat were getting sour or decaying, so he began to experiment. Anton van Leeuwenhoek gave Pasteur the curiosity to see if molecules just spontaneously appear. By exposing grapes to the air resulting in fermentation, Pasteur discovered that germs come from the outside world. This brought the discovery of germs, which

Many scientists say that several people saw his great idea and followed him on the way to discovery, but others opposed it. One of the followers was Louis Pasteur who seems to get most of the credit for the start of the germ theory. Pasteur was a French microbiologists and a dedicated man

Pasteur had already done work six years earlier with the disease chicken cholera, a disease that was to blame for the elimination of chicken flock in France. Through this one vaccine he produced for a single species of bird, he was able to discover the phenomena of virulence, or the harmful quality of a microorganism that causes the

The initial thing that lead Pasteur to his discoveries was from wine fermentation as well as beer fermentation, from the fermentation there was tarter as a byproduct and one scientist claimed they were inactive and all have the same chemical configuration, Pasteur didn’t believe that and so he went about testing that theory to prove it was wrong. It turned out that Pasteur was correct and from there he continued to make discoveries. Later when the silk worm epidemic happened, Pasteur worked with Joseph Lister and came up with the germ theory. Lister performed experiments to test and prove the theory. Later Pasteur did test on controlled group of animals and vaccinated some to prevent the animals from getting sick and dying, at the end of the

Louis Pasteur is most well known for his rabies vaccination although his experiments lead to advances in physics, the idea of pasteurization,and the beginning of microbiology.