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Louis Pasteur
introduced the terms aerobic and anaerobic in describing the growth of yeast at the expense of sugar in the presence or absence of oxygen. He observed that more alcohol was produced in the absence of oxygen when sugar is fermented, which is now termed the Pasteur effect. -
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Great Britian
After twenty years of freedom from the disease, Great Britain experiences an epizootic of rinderpest; in two years, 500,000 cattle die. Government inquiries into the disease and possible policy approaches elicit testimony which illustrates in some depth contemporary views regarding epidemiology and the germ theory of disease. -
Robert Koch
Robert Koch dries films of bacteria, stains them with methylene blue and then photographs them. He uses cover slips to prepare permanent visual records. -
Bacterium lactis
Joseph Lister publishes his study of lactic fermentation of milk, demonstrating the specific cause of milk souring. His research is conducted using the first method developed for isolating a pure culture of a bacterium, which he names Bacterium lactis. -
Louis Pasteur
He developed a method of attenuating a virulent pathogen, the agent of chicken cholera, so it would immunize and not cause disease. -
C. L. Alphonse Laveran
finds malarial parasites in erythrocytes of infected individuals and shows that the parasite enters the organism and replicates -
Robert Koch
He seeks out alternatives, and first uses an aseptically cut slice of a potato as a solid culture medium. He also turns to gelatin, which is added to culture media; the resulting mixture is poured onto flat glass plates and allowed to gel. -
Paul Ehrlich
He refines the use of the dye methylene blue in bacteriological staining and uses it to stain the tubercule bacillus. He shows the dye binds to the bacterium and resists decoloration with an acid alcohol wash. -
Robert Koch
isolates the tubercule bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The search for the tubercule bacillus is more difficult than was the search for the cause of anthrax. He finally isolates the bacillus from the tissues of a workman and stains them with methylene blue, yielding blue colored rods with bends and curves. He injects the tissues from people who had died into animals and then grows the bacilli he isolates into pure cultures. -
Angelina Fannie and Walther Hesse
in Koch's laboratory use agar, an extract of algae, as a solidifying agent to prepare solid media for growing microbes. Fannie suggests the use of agar-agar after learning of it from friends who cook. Agar replaces gelatin because it remains solid at temperatures up to 100 degrees centigrade, it is clear, and it resists digestion by bacterial enzymes. -
Edward Theodore Klebs and Fredrich Loeffler
independently discover Corynebacterium diphtheriae, which causes diphtheria. Loeffler later shows that the bacterium secretes a soluble substance that affects organs beyond sites where there is physical evidence of the organism. -
Ulysse Gayon and Gabriel Dupetit
isolate in pure culture two strains of denitrifying bacteria. They show that individual organic compounds, such as sugars and alcohols, can replace complex organics and serve as reductants for nitrate, as well as serving as carbon sources. -
Ilya Ilich Metchnikoff
demonstrates that certain body cells move to damaged areas of the body where they consume bacteria and other foreign particles. He calls the process phagocytosis. He proposes a theory of cellular immunity. With Ehrlich, Metchnikoff is awarded the Noble Prize in Medicine or Physiology in 1908. -
Robert Koch
puts forth what will become his best-known work, a set of postulates, or standards of proof involving the tubercle bacillus. Koch's postulates are published in a work titled the The Etiology of Tuberculosis. -
Charles Chamberland
develops an unglazed porcelain filter that retains bacteria. -
Hans Christian J. Gram
develops a dye system for identifying bacteria [the Gram stain]. Bacteria which retain the violet dye are classified as gram-positive. The distinction in staining is later correlated with other biochemical and morphological differences. -
Louis Pasteur - Reseach
As part of his rabies research, Louis Pasteur oversees injections of the child Joseph Meister with "aged" spinal cord allegedly infected with rabies virus. Pasteur uses the term "virus" meaning poison, but has no idea of the nature of the causitive organism. Although the treatment is successful, the experiment itself is an ethical violation of research standards. Pasteur knew he was giving the child successively more dangerous portions. -
Theodor Escherich
identifies a bacterium, that is a natural inhabitant of the human gut, which he names Bacterium coli. He shows that certain strains are responsible for infant diarrhea and gastroenteritis. -
Theobald Smith and D. E. Salmon
inject heated killed whole cell vaccine of hog cholera into pigeons and demonstrate immunity to subsequent administration of a live microbial culture. The organism is a bacterium and unrelated to hog cholera or swine plague disease, which is caused by a virus. -
John Brown Buist
devises a method for staining and fixing lymph matter from a cowpox vesicle. Although he believes the tiny bodies he sees are spores, he is nonetheless the first person to see (and photograph) a virus. -
Martinus Beijerink
uses enrichment culture, minus nitrogenous compounds, to obtain a pure culture of the root nodule bacterium Rhizobium, demonstrating that enrichment culture creates the conditions for optimal growth of a desired bacterium. -
Sergei Winogradsky
studies Beggiatoa and determines that it can use inorganic H2S as an energy source and CO2 as a carbon source. He establishes the concept of autotrophy and its relationship to natural cycles. -
Julius Richard Petri
working in Koch's laboratory, introduces a new type of culture dish for semi-solid media. The dish has an overhanging lid that keeps contaminants out. -
The Institut Pasteur
Founded France. -
Emile Roux and Alexandre Yersin
show that Cornyebacterium diphtheriae affects tissues and organs by a toxin. They use a filtrate from cells that can directly kill laboratory animals. -
Martinus Beijerinck
uses enrichment culture, minus nitrogenous compounds, to obtain a pure culture of the root nodule bacterium Rhizobium, demonstrating that enrichment culture creates the conditions for optimal growth of a desired bacterium. -
Hellriegel and Wilfarth
describe symbiotic nitrogen fixation by nodulated legumes. Hellriegel first reported this to a scientific meeting in September 1886, and published a somewhat more extensive paper a few weeks later. The 1888 publication with Wilfarth is considered to be "the classical paper." -
A. Charrin and J. Roger
discover that bacteria can be agglutinated by serum. -
A. Charrin and J. Roger
discover that bacteria can be agglutinated by serum. -
Kitasato
obtained the first pure culture of the strict anaerobic pathogen, the tetanus bacillus Clostridium tetani. Taking advantage of the fact that the spores of the organism are extremely heat-resistant, he heated a mixed culture of C. tetani and other bacteria at 80 degrees for one hour, then cultivated them in a hydrogen atmosphere. -
Emil von Behring and Shibasaburo Kitasato
working together in Berlin in 1890 announce the discovery of diphtheria antitoxin serum, the first rational approach to therapy of infectious diseases. They inject a sublethal dose of diphtheria filtrate into animals and produce a serum that is specifically capable of neutralizing the toxin. They then inject the antitoxin serum into an uninfected animal to prevent a subsequent infection. Behring, trained as a surgeon, was a researcher for Koch. -
Dmitri Ivanowski
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Dmitri Ivanowski
publishes the first evidence of the filterability of a pathogenic agent, the virus of tobacco mosaic disease, effectively launching the field of virology. He passes the agent through candle filters that retain bacteria but isn't sure that he has identified a new agent. -
William Welch and George Nuttall
identify Clostridium perfringens, the organism responsible for causing gangrene. -
William Welch and George Nuttall
identify Clostridium perfringens, the organism responsible for causing gangrene. -
Theobald Smith and F.L. Kilbourne
establish that ticks carry Babesia microti, which causes babesiosis in animals and humans. This is the first account of a zoonotic disease and also the foundation of all later work on the animal host and the arthropod vector. -
Richard Pfeiffer
observes that a heat stable toxic material bound to the membrane of Vibrio Cholerae is released only after the cells are disintegrated. He calls the material endotoxin, to distinguish it from filterable material released by bacteria. -
Alexandre Yersin
isolates Yersinia (Pasteurella) pestis, the organism that is responsible for bubonic plague. Shibasaburo Kitasato also observes the bacterium in cases of plague. -
Martinus Beijerinck
isolates the first sulfate-reducing bacterium, Spirillum desulfuricans (Desulfovibrio desulfuricans). -
Sergei Winogradsky
isolates the first free-living nitrogen-fixing organism, Clostridum pasteurianum. -
David Bruce
describes in great detail the Tsetse fly disease (Nagana - means loss of spirits, depression, in Zulu) in Zululand. He also describes the parasite (drawings of trypanosome and of tsetse) and demonstrates transmission by infected blood or fly bite. -
Max Gruber and Herbert Durham observe Charrin and Roger
to show the agglutination of bacteria by serum is specific. This was recognized as a new disease diagnostic tool. -
Christan Eijkman
while searching for an infectious agent, discovers that beriberi is the result of a vitamin deficiency. He is awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. -
Paul Ehrlich
proposes his "side-chain" theory of immunity and develops standards for toxin and antitoxin. -
The dicovery of antibiotics
Sir Alexander Fleming, a Scottish biologist, defined new horizons for modern antibiotics with his discoveries of enzyme lysozyme (1921) and the antibiotic substance penicillin (1928). -
the discovery of the polio vaccine
On March 26, 1953, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announces on a national radio show that he has successfully tested a vaccine against poliomyelitis, the virus that causes the crippling disease of polio.
