In 1890, Koch returned to his work on tuberculosis. He sought to arrest the disease by means of a preparation, which he called tuberculin, made from cultures of tubercle bacilli. He made two preparations of this kind called the old and the new tuberculin respectively, and his first communication on the old tuberculin aroused considerable…
In 1886, Franz von Soxhlet suggested the pasteurization of milk for infant nutrition.[To that point, pasteurization had been used for wine after Louis Pasteur’s proposal in 1868, but was not popular among makers of fine wines, who “had always safeguarded their wines by maintaining cleanliness in their cellars and by carefully following strict methods of…
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.
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…
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…
The first application of phenolic compounds as antimicrobial agents goes back as far as 1815, when coal tar was used as an antiseptic and disinfectant. It was, however, not until Kuchenmeister in 1860 and Lister in 1867 used phenol (carbolic acid) as a dressing for wounds and in surgery, respectively, that the full potential of…
The Berlin Board of Health passed regulations for meat inspection.
The most important European figure in the German public health movement was Johann Peter Frank (1745-1821), who established the concept of “medical police” with his publication of The System of Medical Police in 1779. Frank’s idea of “medical police” meant that government medical policy should be implemented through enforced regulations. He presented medical policing as…
The existence of tuberculosis in meat has long been known. The sale of tuberculous meat was forbidden in Munich as early as 1730, and later, in other German cities. It is recorded in the recent work of Freidberger and Frohner that in 1677, twelve pupils in a Liepsic school contracted intestinal tuberculosis from eating infected…
The first observation of microbes using a microscope is generally credited to the Dutch draper and haberdasher, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, who lived for most of his life in Delft, Holland. It has, however, been suggested that a Jesuit priest called Athanasius Kircher was the first to observe microorganisms. He was among the first to design…
The first public sewage plant is believed to have operated in the Silesian city of Bunzlau in 1543. The custom of lighting bonfires on summer festival days was perceived to have “the virtue that a great fire hath to purge the infection of the air.” Pigs were employed as scavengers in medieval towns. Mumford notes…
There was practicaly no improvment in water supply systems in midle ages. In Germany, water works were constructed in 1412 and pumps were introduces in 1527 in Hanover. Franciscan monk constructed aqueduct of Zempola in Mexico in the middle of 16th century. In 1582, a pump was erected on the Old London bridge for the…
For some strange reason the myth continues that people in the Renaissance were dirty, slovenly people killed off by plagues because they never bathed. Nothing could be further from the truth in the Germanic part of the Holy Roman Empire, especially in the Imperial City of Nuremberg, were personal cleanliness was highly prized. As a…