History of Microbes Flashcards
What are the two earliest documented infections?
- Polio in Egypt 3800 BCE, a steal that shows a man that is infected with polio
- Small pox 1000 BCE Ramses V, the mummy showed signs of small pox
Who discovered first microbes?
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
he worked in the fabric industry and he made magnifying lens
When was the first vaccination and by who?
Edward Jenner in May in 1976
It was during the small pox epidemic and he noticed that women who milked cows were unlikely to get small pox and thus he took the cow’s pus and injected it into a child’s arm and then 6 weeks later he challenged it with smallpox
The child did not get smallpox
What did Ignaz Semmelweis?
He was a doctor who had two clinics and he noticed that the morality rate of women in his first clinic, ones with medical students, was much higher than in his midwives clinic
he then instructed the healthcare workers to use chlorine to clean their hands and this helped lower the morality rate of women in both clinics
the first clinic were medical students who were dissecting things and working with more microbes
What did Louis Pasteur do?
He worked in the wine industry and he came up with the idea that microbes were the cause of sickness and why wine was going bad
- he had to convince people that microbes exist and they don’t just appear out of thin air
- What was noticed was when the wine was exposed to air and come in contact with the bacteria and dust then the wine would go bad
- But when he sterilized the wine and didn’t let air come in contact, it stayed sterile
Who is Robert Koch
He was responsible for figuring out how a specific microbe is responsible for a specific disease
- How he did this was in 4 steps
1. He found the microbe in all cases of the specific disease
2. The microbe is then isolated and grown in a pure culture, this is in order for it to be isolated and a pure sample thus it can only be the microbe in question
3. The pure microbe is then introduced to a healthy host and if the same disease occurs again then
4. The same strain of microbe is obtained and again isolated and purified to ensure again that it is the microbe in question
- Although sometimes things only affect humans, and if this is the case then the test subject has to be an animal that can best replicate humans
Antibiotics, who came up with it and how?
Alexender flemming
- Penicillin comes from a fungus called penicillium and it was by accident that it was discovered
- Alexander left his plates in his lab over vacation and he realized that the bacteria was being inhibited by the fungus and he decide to investigate and this is what lead to first antibiotic
