Vaccination - History

Vaccination - History

1. Louis Pasteur

   • 1857 - Employed to find the explanation for the souring of sugar beet used in alcohol industry.
   • He blamed germs.
     • He proved they were in the air by sterilising some water and keeping it in two flasks. One was closed and stayed sterile. The other bred micro-organisms.
   • Chicken Cholera Vaccine
     • He heard about Koch's good work and came out of retirement in 1877.
       • This caused many other scientists to join the new field of bacteriology.
       • Both he and Koch worked with large teams in the France/Germany competition for national prestige.
         • Charles Chamberland was in Pasteur's team.
           • He was told to inject chickens with chicken cholera but he forgot as he went on holiday.
             • He left the cholera culter on his desk and injected it into the chickens when he returned.
               • They survived and they tried again and they survived again.
                 • They realised that it was because it was weakened by being left and it made the chicken's immune like Jenner's cowpox had.
       • Rabies
         • Rabbit spines dried and tested on a dying boy. He lived.
       • Found cure for anthrax in sheep.
         • 1881 - Demonstrated in public.

2. Science

   • 18th Century - Micro-organisms had been seen through microscopes
     • Scientists thought they were caused by disease.
       • Spontaneous Generation
         • They thought that it was a random thing or that it came from gases in the air called miasmas

3. Robert Koch

   • Linked diseases to the microbe that caused them.
   • He developed a solid medium to frow cultures and practise dye techniques in to colour microbes.
   • He experimented on his daughter's mice.
   • 1875 - Identified anthrax spores and the bacteria that causes septicaemia, tuberculosis - 1882 and cholera - 1883.

4. Edwin Kleb

   • Diphtheria Germs
   • Others proved an antitoxin could cancel out toxinx produced by germs.
     • Reduce effects.