Ideas about the cause of disease and illness Flashcards

All 7 cards in this deck

What was spontaneous generation?

The belief that microbes were created by decaying matter, rather than being the cause of disease.

Who published Germ Theory, and in what year?

Louis Pasteur, in 1861.

What did Koch's work on microbes add to Pasteur's Germ Theory?

He identified the specific microbes that caused individual diseases (e.g. TB in 1882, cholera in 1883), so vaccines and treatments could be developed.

True or false? Pasteur's Germ Theory was accepted in Britain straight away and quickly led to new treatments.

False. The cause of each disease had to be researched individually, so new vaccines only came in the 1880s and treatments later still.

What did Pasteur's Germ Theory (1861) show about decay?

That microbes carried in the air cause decay, rather than being produced by it, so spontaneous generation was wrong. He believed germs caused disease too, but could not yet prove it.

Give one method Robert Koch developed that helped scientists identify microbes.

Growing bacteria on agar jelly, or staining bacteria with chemical dyes so they showed up clearly under a microscope.

Why were improved microscopes important for Germ Theory in the nineteenth century?

By the mid-1800s microscopes were good enough to show microbes clearly, which made the work of Pasteur and Koch possible.