LOUIS PASTEUR AND GERM THEORY

• Before Pasteur:

  • Miasma - bad poisoned air that caused disease
  • Spontaneous Generation - rotting things generate germs as part of the rotting process
• Louis Pasteur - Germ theory

  • Microbes in air cause substances to rot and go bad, therefore germs in air cause disease
• • Louis Pasteur was a 19th century French Scientist, he wasnt working directly to improve medicine but to find out why some batches of wine and beer went sour in the making
• Swan-necked flask experiment

  • Pasteur concluded that airborne germs got trapped in the bent section of swan-necked flask, but easily entered the straight necked flask, therefore germs came from the air rather than spontaneous generation
• • Louis Pasteur created the process pasteurisation - extending the useful life of liquid, he then published his Germ Theory in 1861
  • However his theory wasnt accepted till the 1870s
  • Once accepted progress was made rapidly in: public health (keeping cities and towns healthy), new vaccines, improved surgery (antiseptics)