HISTORY OF MICROBIOLOGY

Best to think in terms of recurring themes:

1. Cause and cure of diseases

2. Nature of Putrefaction/Fermentation

3. Controversy over Spontaneous Generation.


Ancients felt the world filled with invisible spirits which would explain things we couldn't understand.


a. Death and Disease, Disability (there has to be a reason) WE STILL STRUGGLE WITH THESE THINGS IDEAS TODAY.


Greeks had anthropomorphic gods who interacted with them and could cause disease. Later Greeks lost faith in their gods and formulated other ideas. They were noted thinkers.


Example: Hippocrates--disease comes from an imbalance of intrinsic factors (nutrition) and extrinsic factors--air, exercise, etc.


Four elements of importance to balance: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile. When these get out of balance problems occur. Bleeding to intervene. Today we infuse (add) blood with different ends in mind.


Hebrews and Egyptians believed in God and an afterlife. Some biblical accounts indicate that there was a vague notion of contagion developing --"Don't sleep in the House of a Leper". But also could get leprosy by angering the Lord. Angry Jewish God changed in Christianity. Jewish God brought plagues famines and disease to Egyptians, for example.



Aristotle and others believed in abiogenesis. Life came from inanimate material. Myths among many ancient people talk of the origin of man, even, from decaying corn. Shakespeare wrote about crockadiles coming from the mud of the Nile.



Van Helmont wrote recipe for mice---dirty underwear, corn, in a vessel---mice come out fully formed. Solves another inexplicable problem: The origin of life.
Until this is properly understood we could never understand contagion. 1546



Fracastorius of Verona wrote of contagium vivum--immersed in a syphilis epidemic at the time. Other terms "Seminaria morbi". Described transmission through inanimate objects--fomites--Through air--"ad distans" and through direct contact. Work is ignored, no evidence for any of this. It just made sense to him.


1609 Janssen and Galileo grind lenses to produce low resolution microscopes---microorganisms below the resolution achieved. But improvements were to come.


Hooke--Discovers cells with an improved microscope.



Schleiden and Schwann discover all plants and animals are composed of cells.
1650's Leewenhoek--Delft Holland in the textile industry and part time lens grinder. Got good resolution to allow about 3 or 4 hundred X useful magnification. He put hay and pepper into water and then looked at it through his microscope. He saw microbes in an infusion as seen below.



Leewenhoek saw bacteria, protozoa, yeasts and described all the microbial forms we now know, except for viruses. Although he is not mentioned in the science literature as observing his animalcules divide, nevertheless he believed spontaneous generation was untrue and in his original papers called the idea a "bad joke" as related by Dr. Moll at the University of Amsterdam.

Left Image depicts a hay infusion. Hay is placed in pure water for a few days and protozoa, bacteria, fungi, and algae develop. The larger cells on the left are ciliate protozoa. The small rod shaped organisms in single and pairs are bacteria. The image was made black and white at Northwestern to save space. This is likely very close to what Leewenhoek saw in the 17th Centrury.



Francesco Redi, in the 1700's did a simple experiment to show flies needed parents. Used cheesecloth screening and meat.

Spallanzani, a monk, in the first part of the 18^th Century boiled and sealed broths. When he was careful no microbes developed. His work was criticized by Needham, a Welchman of the Royal Society in that other factors, excluded by Spallanzani, were needed for Sp. Gen. Notably air. Needham performed similar experiments, sloppily executed, in which microbes grew from contamination.

Spallanzani died before he could clearly disprove Needham.

Louis Pasteur, a noted chemist, took up the challance and utilized broths allowing air but disallowing microbes. Grew broths at different altitudes and in a dusty cellar. Used broths with cotton to show the germs accumulated on cotton. Did the Swan neck tube experiment.

Ignaz Semmelweis, an eastern european physician working in a Vienna Hospital, noticed the wards where delivery occurred by midwives had 10X less Puerperal Fever and deaths than those tended to by doctors. He showed he could dramatically decrease "Childbed Fever" by having doctors wash hands in chlorine water after dissection of cadavers and between patients. Was fired for blaming deaths on doctors who didn't wash hands.

Oliver Wendel Holmes wrote on the Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever". Author, Physician, and Anatomy Professor. Late 19^th Century.

Lister used antiseptics on wounds and during surgery. He showed they healed much faster with the antiseptic treatment. Was also the first to isolate a pure culture by serial dilution: Bacterium lactis.

Pasteur wanted to isolate a bacterium in pure culture that caused disease. Began working with Anthrax.

Robert Koch in Germany did too. He worked with various preparations to provide solid culture media. A woman working in his lab tried agar, recommended by a cook who used it to solidify puddings because it stayed solid at warm temps. Koch was using sterile potato slices for media.

Koch isolated anthrax and formulated his Postulates.

Pasteur went to work on chicken cholera and discovered one could attenuate cultures and produce artifical vaccines.

Pasteur solved the riddle of rancid wines in France's vinyards. Recommended sterile technique and Pasteurization (applied to milk and became a central method for controling TB, Diptheria, and other diseases).

Weinogradski and others showed soil bacteria recycle nutrients.

Chamberland developed a bacterial filter. Resulted in:

a. discovery of viruses

b. discovery of toxins

Pasteur produced attenuated rabies virus and rabies vaccination procedure. Tried it on Joseph Meister. It worked.

During the 20^th Century we have:

1. Development of viral culture techniques and attenuation

2. Development of the electron microscope.

3. Discovery of antibiotics (Fleming and Dubos)

4. Discovery of Prions (Pruissner)

5. Bioengineering--removal and replication of genes--incorporating them into microbes and switching them on.

6. DNA vaccines

7. Antiviral Compounds--ribivirin, protease inhibitors.

8. Translation of the entire genome of some microorganisms e.g. yeast.

All not rosy---reemergence of infectious diseases a constant problem. St Louis Encephalitis, West Nile Virus, Lyme disease, AIDS, Hanta virus Sin Nombre,Ebola outbreaks, E. coli, Antibiotic resistant bacterial strains and so on.