Industrial

• Edward Jenner


  Doctor in the late 18th century

  Studied the use of inoculations

  Famous for developing vaccine against smallpox

  Discovered that milk maids often caught cowpox. He infected a boy with it and tried to infect him with smallpox a few weeks later but he never caught it.

  People who made money from inoculations tried to discredit him because they feared being put out of business

  1837 - 40 British government banned inoculations and in 1852 they made smallpox vaccination compulsory

  Not strictly enforced till 1872
• Robert Koch - German scientist

  Was the first scientist to prove that different germs caused mant common diseases.

  In 1882 he discovered the bacteria which caused tuberculosis

  Showed that it was possible to grow specific types of bacteria in a culture dish outside of the body, and then reproduce it in test animals.

  Developed a way to stain different bacteria using coloured dyes which made it easier to single out and study each type of bacteria

  Discovered cholera microbe

  Made it easier for future scientists to study bacteria by growing them in a petri dish and using microscopes.
• Louis Pasteur - famous for germ theory


  French scientist who worked in France for the second half of the 19th Century.

  Asked by the French government to investigate why wine was going bad. He used a powerful microscope to observe microbes in the wine and proved that it could be kept fresh as long as it was not exposed to air.

  Proved that microbes did not grow from within the liquid but only published his ideas until 1878.
• Edwin Chadwick

  Lawyer, but also published studies into health and social problems in towns and cities.

  Proved that people in larger cities had shorter lives than the rest of the population, and that the main reason was the filthy living conditions.

  Government did not take much notice, but when cholera outbreaks became increasingly severe, they began to accept that they might have to take action.

  Cholera first arrived in 1831