Lecture 3: History of Microbiology

Question 1

Did ancient societies use microbes? If so, how?

Answer 1

yes
- brewing beer
- wine-making
- leavened bread
- food preservation by smoking and drying

Question 2

What did Robert Hooke (1665) do?

Answer 2

observed “cells” in a piece of cork (single lens ‘scope)

Question 3

What did Antoni van Leeuwenhoek do?

Answer 3

used staining techniques and very well crafted lenses to observe bacteria and identify their shapes (a microscope)

Question 4

Semmelweis

Answer 4

physician who showed that handwashing prevented puerperal fever (childbirth disease)

Question 5

Spontaneous generation vs microbial antecedents

Answer 5

• the supposed production of living organisms from nonliving matter
• “parents” of microorganisms

Question 6

Needham

Answer 6

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)

Question 7

Vienna

Answer 7

 Center for med ed
 Semmelweis went there to practice from
Hungary
 Univ. of Vienna
 Teaching wing
 Nurses wing
 Home births (midwives)

Question 8

Louis Pasteur

Answer 8

 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

Question 9

Pasteur’s Flasks

Answer 9

Controlled experiment in microbiology - demonstrates biogenesis

Question 10

Germ theory of disease

Answer 10

led to most of modern infectious disease

Question 11

puerperal fever (childbirth disease)

Answer 11

• 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)

Question 12

Robert Koch

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Koch’s Postulates

Answer 13

 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

Question 14

Problems with Koch’s Posutlates

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Edward Jenner

Answer 15

• English physician in the late 18th century
• observed that milkmaids were much less susceptible to smallpox

Question 16

How many did smallpox kill/infect?

Answer 16

about 30% and infected nearly everyone in Europe

Question 17

What did milkmaids have instead of smallpox?

Answer 17

cowpox (much milder)

Question 18

What did Jenner use to save children?

Answer 18

used cowpox to inoculate children and protect them from smallpox?

Question 19

When was small pox eradicated?

Answer 19

1970s

Question 20

Vaccinia and Variola

Answer 20

• saves millions of lives
• kills millions of people

Question 21

variolation

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Who introduced the idea of variolation? How did the figure it out?

Answer 22

Cotton Mather
- after learning about it from his slave (first used in 1720 and idea brought back in the mid 18th century)

Question 23

Paul Ehrlich

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

Culture techniques/ who discovered them

Answer 24

• agar (Fanny Hesse)
• Metabolism (Marjory Stephenson)
• Anaerobic culture (Robert Hungate)

Question 25

Winogradsky and Beijerinck

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

All life depends on…

Answer 26

microbial “fixation” of nitrogen from the atmosphere