The Germ Theory of Disease

Humoral Theory of Medicine

Balance between the four humours (secretions)

Giovanni Morgagni

"Father" of modern anatomical pathology, was first to demonstrate the necessity of basing diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment on a knowledge of anatomical conditions.

(1761) Morgagni

Italian anatomist who linked disease to specific organ pathology, contributing to the understanding of how diseases affect the body.

Girolamo Fracastoro

Invisible organisms ("germs") caused diseases such as syphilis (seminaria = seeds of contagion)
Poem on Syphilis

Avicenna (Ibn Sina)

Influential Islamic physician who wrote the great medical encyclopaedia known as the Canon of Medicine
Concept of Contagion

Edward Jenner

Developed a vaccine for smallpox in 1796 using cowpox, then smallpox on James Phipps

Napolean

Ordered troops vaccinated

Joseph Lister

All surgery led to wound infection

Robert Koch

Demonstrated that Bacillus causes anthrax, he published his classical work on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, discovered the Vibrio that causes cholera and brought back pure cultures of it to Germany. Credited with the 'germ theory of disease'(with Pasteur)

Anthrax

Caused by spores of the bacterium Bacillus anthracis

Pasteur

Anthrax vaccine using sheep, a goat and cows

Attenuation

Cultures can lose virulence over time