hidden worlds 2

Question 1

why was 18th century microscopy difficult?

Answer 1

• Leeuwenhoek was very secretive on how he made the microscopes
• nobody could replicate his work

Question 2

What were 18th century criticisms of the microscope

Answer 2

• didn’t seem to have much relevance to other fields of science
• no one had made the link between germs/bacteria and contagion
• so there was no practical use for microscopes. no real like applications

Question 3

who thought that microorganisms were proof of spontaneous generation, due to their simplicity?

Answer 3

Lamarck

Question 4

Who thought that microorganisms and the microscope proved that spontaneous generation did not occur? why?

Answer 4

• Leeuwenhoek
• saw organisms like rotifers, saw how complex they were and witnessed their life stages, thought this proved they werent evidence of spontaneous generation

Question 5

How was the invention of the microscope a huge paradigm shift, particularly for biologists?

Answer 5

1. changed how people thought of life, the scale of it
2. changed the perspective on what is alive
3. opened a new branch of biology (microbiology)
4. Changed the way other branches of biology worked
5. set the stage for germ theory and cause of disease

Question 6

what were ancient causes of diseases? what changed this pattern of thinking?

Answer 6

• originally, disease was thought to be caused by contact with the sick, but originated for supernatural backgrounds
• was thought to be from divine punishment, sin, etc.
• Hippocrates rejected supernatural theory and proposed Humoral theory, and how internal and external environments caused illness

Question 7

What is miasma?

Answer 7

• long held thought (from the ancient greeks) that there are toxins or substances in the air that can cause one to fall ill
• ‘bad air’, was used as a default explanation for all forms of illness

Question 8

who was william farr? what was his work with cholera?

Answer 8

• was a statistician in England, collected vast amounts of medical and disease data
• was interested in the mechanism that spread cholera, thought it spread through miasma/bad air
• (really its spread through water)
• through his census data, saw that people at lowest elevations (near the thames, which smelled bad) had higher outbreaks of cholera
• people at higher elevations had better air, less cholera outbreaks
• thought this proved misama theory

Question 9

Who was john snow? what was his work on cholera

Answer 9

• a local doctor in London, who was not convinced about miasma theory
• also studied cholera
• saw that a new outbreak was localized in soho, and had a unifying element
• all those exposed to cholera used the same central water pump, and outbreaks were concentrated to this area
• suggested that it was a water-based disease
• other evidence also proved that it was water based

Question 10

who was Ignaz semmelweiz and what does he have to do with handwashing?

Answer 10

• was not popular at the time, and had no influence
• however, he saw that rates of maternal postpartum fever and mortality was very high, killing many mothers
• he also saw death rates of mothers were much higher for doctors rather than midwives
• Doctors would preform autopsies, then immediately delivered babies with out washing hands in-between
• Once doctors started washing hands, disease dropped off dramatically
• however, he did not propose a theoretical explanation

Question 11

who was Louis pasteur?

Answer 11

• french scientist
• worked with fermentation research to dispute spontaneous generation
• he thought if we continued to believe in spontaneous generation, medical research would never progress

Question 12

Who was Robert Koch?

Answer 12

• german doctor
• worked during the war, lots of work on traumatic injuries
• did lots of research into anthrax and tuberculosis

Question 13

What is anthrax? How did Koch prove it was a bacterial issue?

Answer 13

• disease that caused lots of death in livestock animals at the time
• Koch took the blood of these diseased animals, isolated the bacterium and grew cultures of it until it had no trace of animal blood
• he took the bacterium and inflected a healthy animal, proving that the bacteria was the cause of the disease

Question 14

Koch proved to the publish that all bacteria were ________ _______

Answer 14

unique species

Question 15

What are Kochs postulates?

Answer 15

1. The organism must always be present in every case of the disease, but not in healthy individuals
   
   2. The organism must be isolated from a diseased individual and grown in pure culture
   3. The pure culture must cause the same disease when inoculated into a healthy, susceptible individuals
   4. The same pathogen must be isolated from the experimentally infected individuals
      *4th postulate added by American plant pathologist Erwin Frink Smith (1905)