Lecture 3: History of Microbiology Flashcards
Did ancient societies use microbes? If so, how?
yes
- brewing beer
- wine-making
- leavened bread
- food preservation by smoking and drying
What did Robert Hooke (1665) do?
observed “cells” in a piece of cork (single lens ‘scope)
What did Antoni van Leeuwenhoek do?
used staining techniques and very well crafted lenses to observe bacteria and identify their shapes (a microscope)
Semmelweis
physician who showed that handwashing prevented puerperal fever (childbirth disease)
Spontaneous generation vs microbial antecedents
- the supposed production of living organisms from nonliving matter
- “parents” of microorganisms
Needham
cooked broth, left it in a flask, and soon contained bacteria and fungi (thought this was evidence that microbes were already there and could come together to form the microbes)
Vienna
Center for med ed
Semmelweis went there to practice from
Hungary
Univ. of Vienna
Teaching wing
Nurses wing
Home births (midwives)
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur-French microbiologist in mid
19th century
Took up the question of spontaneous
generation-designed experiments to
determine the answer
Showed that “bent neck flask” prevented
growth of microbes in heated broth
Also developed vaccine for chicken cholera, process for heat preservation of liquids
Pasteur’s Flasks
Controlled experiment in microbiology - demonstrates biogenesis
Germ theory of disease
led to most of modern infectious disease
puerperal fever (childbirth disease)
- would be harmless until women would give birth, tissues would rupture, it would enter the blood stream, give them sepsis, and lead to death
- doctors would examine women who died from this, then go to women in labor to examine them for it without washing their hands (leading to all of the women getting it)
Robert Koch
Rival of Pasteur
- both studied etiology of the disease Anthrax
- discovered Bacillus anthracis, rod-shaped Gram-positive microbes, blood of dead cattle
- Koch formulated three postulates to determine if a microbe causes a disease
Koch’s Postulates
Isolate the microorganism from the diseased patient
Experimentally show that inoculation of the
organism in an animal model causes the
disease
Re-isolate the organism from the diseased
animal, show that it is the same organism
Problems with Koch’s Posutlates
1.) - some organisms are easier to grow in a lab than others, such as viruses.
- It is hard to distinguish between disease-causing microbes and all of the other microbes that are present.
2.) an animal might not respond to a microbe the same way a human would
Edward Jenner
- English physician in the late 18th century
- observed that milkmaids were much less susceptible to smallpox
How many did smallpox kill/infect?
about 30% and infected nearly everyone in Europe
What did milkmaids have instead of smallpox?
cowpox (much milder)
What did Jenner use to save children?
used cowpox to inoculate children and protect them from smallpox?
When was small pox eradicated?
1970s
Vaccinia and Variola
- saves millions of lives
- kills millions of people
variolation
ex: getting cowpox to not get smallpox
- The idea that a mild case
of disease could protect
against the more serious was known
- Variolation was deliberate
inoculation w/ Smallpox
Who introduced the idea of variolation? How did the figure it out?
Cotton Mather
- after learning about it from his slave (first used in 1720 and idea brought back in the mid 18th century)
Paul Ehrlich
- German physician-late 19th century
- Developed the notion of chemotherapy, using medicines to
specifically kill pathogens - Developed the idea of immunity
- Introduced the idea of antibodies and anti-toxins to explain serum therapies- injecting serum from immunized or infected animals to protect against disease -von Behring
- Shared Nobel Prize w/ Metchnikoff
Culture techniques/ who discovered them
- agar (Fanny Hesse)
- Metabolism (Marjory Stephenson)
- Anaerobic culture (Robert Hungate)
Winogradsky and Beijerinck
- Showed that bacteria are
important factors in cycling
of nutrients in environment - Showed that microbial
consortia in environment
were important to
understand - Developed methods for
studying bacterial and
fungal growth, metabolic
processes in complex
systems
All life depends on…
microbial “fixation” of nitrogen from the atmosphere
