19th Century Medical Advances

The 19th Century

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• Germ theory changed the original ideas of the causes of ill-health. Huge steps were taken in the 19th century for identifying the causes of diseases and moreover effective treatments.
• Three major people played a role in this: Pasteur, Koch and Ehrlich. Pasteur discovered the link between germs and disease. He argued micro-organisms were the cause of disease; discovering these micro-organisms would then led to an effective vaccine being created. He developed an effective vaccine against rabies in 1880.
• Koch developed on Pasteur's work; he linked certain diseases to specific germs (this is the science of bacteriology). In 1883, he identified the specific bacillus that led to tuberculosis and in 1884 those responsible for cholera.

19th Century

• Koch and his students then began isolating the causes of many diseases, all of which were prevalent and deadly in Britain. His team developed a system using dyes to stain bacteria for easier studying with a microscope. Koch also realised that antibodies (a natural defence mechanism of the body against germs) could aid in destroying bacteria and build immunity against the disease.
• The discovery that one antibody worked specifically on one bacteria was crucial to understanding bodily defence against disease. This backed up the idea that introducing a weakened form of the disease into the body would allow a person to fight off a stronger strain. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1905.

The 19th Century

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• Caption: Paul Ehrlich (1854-1915)
• Paul Ehrlich:
• A German physician and scientist
• He was one of Koch's students
• Well known for Salvarsan 606, which was developed in 1910
• This was the first effective treatment for syphilis which was a sexually transmitted disease
• This was the first drug nicknamed a 'magic bullet'
• This term illustrates a drug that is designed to specifically target a certain germ causing the illness, while not really effecting the body in any other way
• Impact of germ theory:
• Changed medical knowledge regarding causes and treatments of diseases
• Furthered the value of science in establishing links between bacteria and disease