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A representation by Robert Seymour of the cholera epidemic depicts the spread of the disease in the form of poisonous air.. The miasma theory was the predominant theory of disease transmission before the germ theory took hold towards the end of the 19th century; it is no longer accepted as a correct explanation for disease by the scientific community.
This began the path to germ specificity within the theory. [49] Louis Pasteur's contemporary Robert Koch devoted much of his scientific study to discovering certain pathogens and connecting them to specific diseases. These scientists were often in competition with one another and so the Koch-Pasteur rivalry is a well-known part of germ theory's ...
The germ theory was not yet established (Louis Pasteur proposed it in 1861). Snow did not understand the mechanism by which disease was transmitted, but the evidence led him to believe that it was not foul air. Based on the pattern of illness among residents, he hypothesized that cholera was spread by an agent in contaminated water. [7]
The importance of hygiene was not recognized until the 19th century and the germ theory of disease. Until then streets were usually unhygienic, with live animals and human parasites facilitating the spread of transmissible disease. [74]
Theories of the Black Death are a variety of explanations that have been advanced to explain the nature and transmission of the Black Death (1347–51). A number of epidemiologists from the 1980s to the 2000s challenged the traditional view that the Black Death was caused by plague based on the type and spread of the disease.
According to germ theory, infectious diseases are caused by the presence of pathogenic microorganisms present within the physical body. Previously, disease was thought to be caused by miasma, or bad air, and while microorganisms had been discovered, they were not known to cause disease. Towards the end of the 19th century, germ theory helped ...
Relevant microbes may be viruses, bacteria, or fungi, and they may be spread through breathing, talking, coughing, sneezing, spraying of liquids, toilet flushing or any activities which generate aerosol particles or droplets or generate fomites, such as raising of dust.
Marko Anton Plenčič, Marcus von Plenciz or Marcus Antonius von Plenciz (28 April 1705 – 25 November 1786) was a Slovenian physician in Vienna who was among the early adopters of the germ or contagion theory of infection at a time when infectious disease was attributed to bad air or miasmas.