Answer to Question #313840 in Microbiology for Okay

Question

Briefly discuss the main contributions made by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch in the development of modern day microbiology.

Answer 1

Pasteur postulated the germ theory of disease, which states that microorganisms are the causes of infectious disease. Pasteur's attempts to prove the germ theory were unsuccessful. However, the German scientist Robert Koch provided the proof by cultivating anthrax bacteria apart from any other type of organism.Koch’s postulates

Tuberculosis was then responsible for one in seven deaths in Europe. Koch discovered rod-shaped bacteria, called bacilli, in patients’ tissues, but needed more evidence that they were the cause of the disease. He formulated four conditions that came to be known as Koch’s postulates:

1. the organism was present in every case of the disease
2. it could be cultured outside the body
3. inoculation of the culture caused the disease in an animal
4. the organism could be found in that animal

Culturing the bacilli was difficult, but Koch eventually succeeded in growing them on coagulated blood serum, and found that inoculating animals with the bacilli caused tuberculosis. He also found that sputum from patients was the main way the disease spread. This led to strategies to prevent disease by sterilising clothes and bed sheets and prohibiting public spitting.

He went on to discover the bacteria that cause cholera, and demonstrate the importance of a clean water supply to prevent the disease. Robert Koch was awarded the 1905 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on tuberculosis.