CHAPTER XXXII. 

 A BRIEF HISTORY OF BACTERIOLOGY UP TO 1881. 



Bacteriology as a science is a development of the latter 

 half of the nineteenth century. Pasteur's epoch-making 

 work on fermentation in the fifties, on a silk worm disease 

 (protozoan) in 1865, on ''diseases" of wine and their preven- 

 tion by "pasteurization," 1860-1865 were laying a firm 

 foundation. Lister's antisepsis, 1867, Koch's (1876) and 

 Pasteur's (1877) proof that bacteria cause anthrax, Koch's 

 (1878) discovery that wound infections are due to micro- 

 organisms were important mile stones. The main reasons 

 for the sudden ami ivorld-uide interest in bacteriology in the 

 early eighties were certain important methods which made it 

 comparatively easy to stud}' bacteria. These were the intro- 

 duction of anilin dyes for staining by Weigert in 1877, the 

 great improvements in the microscope by Abbe and the 

 adaptation of gelatin plates for isolating bacteria in pure 

 culture by Koch in 1881. 



However as in all sciences what one can call preliminary 

 work had been going on for about two hundred years in the 

 course of which some of the fundamental principles of bac- 

 teriological study hvere established. The chronological 

 table at the end of this section indicates that isolated obser- 

 vations in different lines probably had their effects on other 

 lines. For the purpose of discussion these fields must be 

 considered separately. They are: I. Spontaneous Genera- 

 tion. II. Causation of Disease. III. Putrefaction and Fer- 

 mentation. IV. The Study of Forms. 



SPONTANEOUS GENERATION. 



Speculation as to the first origin of life is as old as history 

 and doubtless older. Every people of antiquity has its own 



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