It wasn\'t until the nineteenth century that the true cause of disease, the germ

Question

It wasn't until the nineteenth century that the true cause of disease, the germ theory, was discovered. Trace some of the preliminary steps leading to this discovery taken in the 16th to the early 19th centuries. Be sure to include Pasteur's work. (Hint-though seemingly wedded to the humoral theory, physicians such as Fracastorius and onward began to guess at the existence of hidden or invisible "seeds" as the cause of illness while Leuwenhoek's microscope enabled researchers to actually see germs

Explanation / Answer

Ans.) Germ theory of disease is a fundamental theory which proved that diseases are caused by microorganisms. These organisms are very small and minute. They cannot be seen see without magnification. These microorganisms enter to the living host and eventually grow and multiply within and cause the disease. The term “Germ” refers to any or all kind of microorganisms which are capable of causeing disease. Such organism includes bacteria, protist, fungus, virus, prion etc. These disease causing microorganisms are called pathogens and the diseases they cause are called infectious diseases.

Many researchers worked on the germ theory of diseases to find out the root cause of the disease from the beginning of 15th century. Few got success and few of them failed also but the work on this theory was continuously carried away.

At first, the germ theory was proposed by Girolamo Fracastoro in 1546, in his book  Contagione et Contagiosis Morbis he described that epidemic diseases were caused by transferable seed-like entities that transmit infection by direct or indirect contact or sometimes maybe while not contact over long distances. The diseases were classified on the basis of their means of transfer.

Italian researcher Francesco Redi provided early proof against abiogenesis. He devised experiment in 1668 during which he used 3 jars. He placed a dish and egg in each of the 3 jars. He kept one jar open, another one tightly sealed and the last one lined with gauze. After few days, he ascertained that the dish within the open jar was lined by maggots and also the jar lined with gauze had maggots on the surface of the gauze. However, the tightly sealed jar had no maggots within or outside it. He conjointly noticed that the maggots were found solely on surfaces that were accessible by flies. From this he provided evidence that abiogenesis is not a plausible theory.

It was also proposed that microorganisms are at first observed in the 1670s by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, who was considered an early pioneer in microbiology. Well it was also said that Athanasius Kircher did this work prior to Leeuwenhoek. As it is written in several research papers that "When Rome was struck by the bubonic plague in 1656, Kircher spent days on end caring for the sick. In 1700, physician Nicolas Andry disputed that microorganisms are called as "worms" were responsible for smallpox and other diseases.

In 1720, Richard Bradley also proposed a theory which stated that the plague and 'all pestilential distempers' were caused by 'poisonous insects'. In the year1762, an Austrian physician Marcus Antonius von Plenciz published a book entitled Opera medico-physica and summarized the theory of contagion stating that there were several definite 'animalculae' present in the soil and air, causing specific diseases.

A more elaborate experiment on the correlation between germ and sickness were carried out by Pasteur between 1860 and 1864. He discovered the pathology of the birth fever and also the pathology of eubacteria within the blood and recommended that boric acid could kill these microorganisms before and when confinement. In addition, he also proposed that fermentation and growth of microorganisms in nutrient broths didn't take place by spontaneous generation. In his experiment, he used uncovered freshly prepared stewed broth to air in vessel which contained a filter to prevent all particles passing through to the expansion mediu. Nothing grew within the broths; so the living organisms that grew in such broth came from outside, as spores on dirt, instead of being generated inside the broth.

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