Established the “Germ Theory” in 1888
Pasteurization process for beer and milk –1877
Discovered anaerobic life, microbial utilization of oxygen, filterable viruses.
Defined fermentation, and developed rabies and anthrax vaccines and the basis for aseptic surgery.
Known for his work on tuberculosis, for which he was awarded a Nobel Prize.
Established Koch’s Postulates that provide the basis for establishing if an organism is the cause of a disease
Koch pioneered the use of microbiologic techniques still used today –agar growth media, Petri dishes; bacterial purification and staining techniques.
Not until the Act of 1875 was inspection and analysis of imported foodstuffs compulsory; this Act won the support of the trade industries because of its emphasis on “outside” contamination as well as its important distinction between “adulterated foods,” that is, food presenting itself as “pure” although it indeed had additives, and “manufactured” foods, such…
The first UK incinerators for waste disposal were built in Nottingham by Manlove, Alliott & Co. Ltd. in 1874 to a design patented by Albert Fryer. They were originally known as destructors. Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of organic substances contained in waste materials. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as “thermal treatment”. Incineration of waste materials converts…
Budd did not put his views before the profession until 1857-60 when he published a series of papers in The Lancet, afterwards embodied in his work Typhoid Fever in 1873. He had long since taught them in the Bristol Medical School. During the depressing period of opposition that he encountered, he gained support from fellow country doctors; otherwise…
Jacobi of New York seems to have been the first health expert to recommend the heating of cows’ milk. He recommended that milk for infant feeding be put into baby feeding bottles momentarily heated to 212° F.
The APHA was founded in 1872, at a time when scientific advances were helping to reveal the causes of communicable diseases. These discoveries laid the foundation for the public health profession and for the infrastructure to support its work. From its inception, the APHA was dedicated to improving the health of all residents of the United…
In 1871, construction of a municipal drinking water filtration plant in Poughkeepsie, N. Y., dramatically reduces the incidence of typhoid fever in that area. The first successful slow sand filtration plant in America was placed into service July 8, 1872. The success of this project was heralded as epidemics all but disappeared and Poughkeepsie could no…
Knowledge that microbes lead fascinating chemical lives is as old as microbiology itself. Observations in the late 19th century by John Scott Burdon-Sanderson that were elaborated on by Pasteur and Joubert gave rise to the idea that compounds secreted by some microbes could have remarkable effects on the lives of others. In 1871, he reported that Penicillium…
The beginnings of preservation and sterilization techniques go back to ancient times, Aristotle recommending to Alexander the Great that his troops should boil the water before they drank it. The principles of sterilization were not adapted to surgery until the Nineteenth Century. In 1870 Lister’s antiseptic methods were used by Germany during the Franco-Prussian war,…
In the early 1850s Griesinger went to Egypt to head the medical school and the health commission in Cairo, and became the personal physician to Egyptian viceroy Abbas 1. In Egypt, Griesinger and German physician Theodor Bilharz found hookworms during autopsies and linked them to local endemic occurrences of “Egyptian chlorosis” (iron deficiency anemia), which…
Edward Frankland set up filtration experiments in the laboratory, using glass cylinders six feet high and about ten inches in diameter, open at the top and bottom and placed over; earthenware troughs. A glass tube was inserted in the middle for aeration purposes. Five different filter media were used: coarse gravel, sand, soil, loamy marl…
Finally, it was recognized that the 1848 Act had failed to produce the desired results: this was due mainly to that Act being permissive rather than compulsory. The 1866 Act compelled local authorities to improve local conditions and remove nuisances (health hazards). They became responsible also for the provision of sewers, water and street cleaning.…
The Board of Health, later known as the Metropolitan Board of Health began after the American Civil War on February 18, 1865 when the first Report of the Council of Hygiene and Public Health of the Citizens’ Association of New York (known as Citizen’s Association Report on the Sanitary Condition of the City) was written:…
Beginning in 1865, Lister used carbolic acid to wash his hands, his instruments, and the bandages used in the operation. Lister also sprayed the air with carbolic acid to kill airborne germs. After more than a year of using and refining these techniques, Lister had sufficient data to show that his methods were a success.…
Pettenkofer was a major figure in the development of the academic stdy of public hygiene and sanitary reform in the nineteenth centur. In 1865, Pettenkofer was made ordinary professor of hygiene and elected university rector at Munich. During an audience with the young King Ludwig II, Pettenkofer promoted hygiene so effectively that chairs were created…
In 1864 Edmund Alexander Parkes published the first edition of the Manual of Practical Hygiene; it reached during his lifetime a fourth edition, an eighth edition in 1891, and was translated into many languages. It used a traditional airs, waters and places structure, going back to Hippocrates, and this persisted for a generation. In 1896 it…
In 1857, Pasteur returned to the École Normale as director of scientific studies and continued his research on the problem. Notably, on April 20, 1862, he completed his first test of boiling and then cooling wine to kill the souring bacteria, a method of wine preservation (heating) that the Chinese first discovered as far back…
The first English milk law was passed prohibiting watering of milk.