Koch Flashcards
What theory was used to describe the causes of disease and decay before Koch and Pasteur?
spontaneous generation
What is the theory of spontaneous generation?
the idea that life (like maggots in rotten flesh) can appear spontaneously from non-living things
What scientists initially disproved spontaneous generation and what did they prove instead?
Redi and Spallanzani
(think red spaghetti)
They proved that living matter has to be present before other living things could appear
Who most effectively disproved the theory of spontaneous generation and what theory did they develop to replace it?
Pasteur, who developed the “germ theory of disease”
What is the germ theory of disease?
1) germs (microbes/microorganisms) cause disease
2) all micro-organisms come from pre-existing micro-organisms
What technique did Koch develop?
the agar plate technique for growing micro-organisms
What did Koch use the agar plate technique for?
to culture the isolated anthrax bacillus
Koch carried out an extensive study on what?
anthrax bacillus
What was Koch’s process for studying anthrax bacillus?
examined the blood of sheep that had died from anthrax → identified rod-shaped bacteria → isolated this bacteria and grew it in cultures → injected cultured bacteria into healthy sheep → healthy sheep developed anthrax
What did Koch show in his anthrax study?
that the anthrax spores he had grown could cause the disease in other animals and
kill them
Koch’s anthrax study proved which theory and how?
the germ theory of disease, because they showed that a micro-organism (grown outside the body) caused a disease
What did Koch conclude about the causes of diseases from his research?
each disease is caused by a specific
micro-organism
What are “Koch’s postulates”?
the criteria that must be met to determine whether a particular micro-organism is responsible for
causing a disease
Koch discovered the bacterium responsible for what two diseases?
1) tuberculosis
2) cholera
What bacteria causes tuberculosis?
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
