Essay about The Father of Microbes: Biography of Louis Pasteur

Louis Pasteur was magnificently a genius. His life was an example of hard work and persistence. He was called “The father of modern hygiene, public health and much of modern medicine, as well as the father of microbiology and immunology.” As a scientist, he made many discoveries and experimentations that are benefits to human and animals. Although sometimes his claims raised controversies, Louis Pasteur investigated, revised deeper and deeper his claims to bring up more evidences that lead him to more and more discoveries. Today, because of his claims; we know the correlation or causation between putrefaction and fermentation. We know what makes the milk spoiled, and how to prevent people to overuse it by putting an expiring date on the gallon.

Despite its barbaric reputation, the Civil War greatly impacted the sanitation systems used in today’s medical fields. One major impact in today’s sanitation systems, are the methods doctors and surgeons use to help prevent disease and infections. One way doctors prevent the spread of diseases, is by washing their hands for a full ten minutes before operating or examining a patient. This method of preventing diseases is efficient because it kills the germs that are on a medical officials hand and prevents them from spreading to the next patient from the doctor or surgeon palpating the patient (“Medicine During the Civil War”). This is one of the greatest medical innovations gained from the Civil War. Since there are now proper medical schools, doctors and surgeons are now able to realize the causes of certain bacterial and viral infections. Another way that today’s sanitation systems were affected from the Civil War, are the precautionary steps that medical officials take to keep today’s hospitals clean from bacteria and viruses. Today’s

He believed that pathology and anatomy, 2 subjects that he studied, had been neglected. Because of this he wrote a book in 1750 called “Elemens d’hippiatrique.” In 1761, King Louis XV wanted to prevent cattle disease, protect grazing land, and train farmers on proper technique. He wanted a school in Lyon and wanted bourgelat to be the Director. On Aug 4th, 1761 he got the money to build the school, “The school for diseases of cattle.”

“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

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

It all began with Joseph Lister a pioneer in antiseptic surgical approaches introduced new principles of cleanliness which transformed surgical practice in the late 1800s. We take it for granted that a surgeon will guard a patient 's safety by using aseptic methods. But this was not always the case, and until Lister introduced sterile surgery, a patient could undergo a procedure successfully only to die from a postoperative infection known as ‘ward fever’. Lister read about the experiments in fermentation conducted by French chemist Louis Pasteur and conducted his own experiments to conclude that micro-organisms were responsible for the infections in patients. He set about trying to find an effective method of eliminating the micro-organisms by exposing them to strong chemicals. After extensive experimentation, he found an effective antiseptic in carbolic acid. He treated the surgical instruments and wounds of patients with the chemical and discovered that when the solution was swabbed on

He was a hard working student, but not the best. He received a doctorate degree in 1847. He also spent lots of time related to research on tartrate acid. He found different ways to kill many different germs. He found cures for rabies and anthrax and found a way to pasteurize milk. That saved many lives.

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.

Since the discovery and identification of viruses, scientists and physicians have been coming up with ways to combat bacterial illness. One physician in particular, Felix d’Herelle, was truly dedicated to finding a remedy for the bacterial illnesses, primarily the flu, spreading among French soldiers and civilians during World War I. Since no resolution existed at the time for these critically ill soldiers and civilians, many casualties occurred around this time. In 1917, Herelle unveiled the underlying causes of the development of bacterial infections. He eventually developed a healing agent for bacterial infections, using viruses to eat away at the disease-causing bacteria inside the ill.

Louis Pasteur was one of the brilliant scientists of his day. He was the one who discovered vaccines for Rabies, Anthrax, Cholera, Tuberculosis, and Smallpox. His most important discovery in medicine was the idea of injecting the disease into someone who already has the disease to build up immunity to it and help the body grow stronger. Besides the Rabies vaccine discovery, he is most known for discovering the idea called “the germ theory of disease,” which is the idea that specific germs cause diseases, and if they can determine the germ they can cure the disease by injecting it into the body. His motivation for these discoveries all started when a beer factory had fermented and the beer had gone sour. This caused the owner of the factory to question why and he brought in Louis Pasteur to help him figure out this anomaly. Louis figured out it was because of the microorganisms found in the beer that was causing it to sour. He began looking at different types of drinks as well like milk and

Two of them were Emile Roux and Charles Chamberland. He had heard about the work of another scientist, Edward Jenner, who had found a vaccine for small pox. Louis investigated the vaccine and how it worked by exploration and discovery. He didn’t know how Edward Jenner’s vaccine worked, so he just guessed and check, or exploration and discovery. This consisted of inoculating chickens with different cultures of the chicken cholera. They discovered that the old cultures made the chickens immune to the

Pasteur spent a large portion of his life working on the causes of diseases, including septicemia, cholera, diphtheria, fowl cholera, tuberculosis, and smallpox. He was intensely engaged in finding a vaccine for rabies and spent many years of his life studying the disease.

In the late 1800’s germ theories became the new focus for scientists. Louis Pasteur created systems for inoculation and the pasteurization method that kills germs in food products. In 1876, Robert Koch, the founder of bacteriology, discovered that deadly diseases could be caused by bacterium (Senior 2014). Scientists today, still use Koch’s germ theory to prove causes of contagions.

The topic that I chose to research was the discoveries of Louis Pasteur. Mr. Pasteur made a large impact on the medical world with his discoveries. A large amount of these discoveries were motivated at the request of friends, or towns, which would request his help in solving a problem. While trying to further advance his knowledge on fermentation, he discovered the concept of germs and their relation to the spread of illnesses. He also tested the idea of live germs as vaccinations with success. Because of these concepts he discovered, the medical world was able to learn and grow significantly in limiting the spread of infections as well as introducing vaccines. His discovery also impacted the surgical world greatly. Surgeons now had the knowledge

Sanitation, disinfection, and proper sterilization are critical to the development and survival of health care. Lack of proper sanitation may lead to many WASH- related diseases. While now health care professional understand the importance of sanitation many years back basic sanitation was non existence these times was know as the dark age, medieval times, because of the multiple disease and epidemics spread claiming the lives of more than 60 million people due to lack of sanitization (Baratosy, 2015). It wasn’t until the mid 1800’s that it was discovered that by disinfecting, and sanitizing many diseases, which caused high mortality rates, could be controlled (Baratosy, 2015). We now witness a major decrease in spread of infection when compared to the 1800s yet considering the statistical studies done of the spread of infectious diseases in healthcare facilities due to the lack of proper sanitation and disinfection; there is still a ways to go. In 2011 Studies show that 1 out of 20 patients contract an infection after receiving medical