content

• problems in 1848 - 4 humours

  Galen and Hippocrates - 4 humours of the body (blood, yellow bile, black yellow and phlegm) and thought an inbalance in them causes disease
• problems in 1848 - miasma

  disease was carried in unpleasant smells and harmful fumes in the air. people understood that there was often a high rate of disease in poor areas. also knew that disease tended to spread quickly in hot weather
• problems in 1848 - spontaneous generation

  people didn't know about the link between microorganisms and disease, so spontaneous generation theory developed. this theory claimed that rotting material created maggots, fleas and disease
• problems in 1848 - doctors knowledge

  doctors would observe a few dissections during their training but most people believed in life after death meaning that they would be buried
• factors affecting progress in 1848

  • lack of understanding closely linked with the level of technology available at the time
  • lack of funding for research and the development of new ideas. the government did not feel responsible for issues like this and hospitals usually relied on charity for funding
  • doctors wanted to continue on doing what they had always done and didn't want to have to learn new ways of treating patients
• what did Pasteur's experiments prove

  proved that bacteria was spreading disease
• Pasteur - 1854 beer experiments

  asked by a brewery company to investigate why their alcohol was going sour. developments in technology meant microscopes were more powerful and Pasteur discovered there were lots of tiny microorganisms in beer. Pasteur did not believe that microbes were caused by spontaneous generation and suggested that it was the microbes that was making the beer sour. proved his theory when he discovers that the microorganisms could be killed by heating the liquid.
• Pasteur - germ theory


  air contains living microorganisms

  microorganisms are not evenly distributed in the air

  microorganisms in air cause decay

  microorganisms can be killed by heating them

  his ideas were ridiculed and resisted at first
• Pasteur - silkworm experiments

  In 1865, he was then asked to investigate diseases in silkworms and proved that bacteria was spreading the disease and killing the silkworms