THE GOLDEN AGE OF MICROBIOLOGY

 THE GOLDEN AGE OF MICROBIOLOGY

• Pasteur’s work with swan neck flasks ushered in the Golden Age of Microbiology.
• A number of disease-causing microbes was discovered, with great  understanding microbial metabolism and techniques for isolating and characterizing microbes were improved ,within 60 years (1857–1914).
• Scientists identified the role of immunity in preventing disease and controlling microbes, developed vaccines, and introduced techniques used to prevent infection during surgery.  
  

Recognition of the Relationship between Microorganisms and Disease

• Fracastoro and a few others suggested that invisible organisms produce diseases.
• Most scientists believed that disease was due to causes such as supernatural forces, poisonous vapors called miasmas.
• Imbalances among the four humors thought to be present in the body. 
•  Since the time of the Greek physician Galen (129–199),the role of the four humors (blood, phlegm, yellow bile[choler], and black bile [melancholy]) in disease had been widely accepted.
  
• In the early nineteenth century, supported the idea that microorganisms cause disease—that is, the germ theory of disease—began to accumulate. 

Agostino Bassi (1773–1856) 

• Firsty, AgostinoBassi showed that microorganism could cause diseases. when he demonstrated in 1835, a silkworm disease was due to a fungal infection. 
• He also suggested that many diseases were due to microbial infections.   

M. J. Berkeley(1845)

• M. J. Berkeley in 1845 , proved that  great Potato Blight of Ireland was caused by a water mold.

Heinrich de Bary(1853)  

• Heinrich de Bary in 1853, showed that smut and rust fungi caused cereal crop diseases. 
• Following his successes studies of fermentation, Pasteur was asked by a French government to investigate the pèbrine disease of silkworms that was disrupting the silk industry.
• After several years of research and work , he showed that diseases was causing due to a protozoan parasite. The disease was controlled by raising caterpillars from eggs produced by healthy moths.

Joseph Lister (1827–1912)  

•  English surgeon Joseph Lister (1827–1912),worked on  Indirect evidence for the germ theory of disease came from prevention of wound infections. 
• Lister, impressed with Pasteur’s studies on the involvement of microorganisms in fermentation and putrefaction and developed a system of antiseptic surgery designed to prevent microorganisms from entering wounds. 
• Instruments were heated sterilized, and phenol was used on surgical dressings and at
  times sprayed over the surgical area. 
• The approach was remarkably successful and transformed surgery after Lister published his findings in 1867. 
• It also provided strong indirect evidence for the role of microorganisms in disease because phenol, which kills bacteria, also prevented wound infections.  
  

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