Pasteur, Koch, and Lister Combating Microbes Worldwide

With the beginnings of the germ theory of disease from Anton Von Leuwenhoek who showed that microorganisms existed everywhere, French scientist Louis Pasteur and German physician Robert Koch founded bacteriology. The two men made their discoveries using different techniques and formed a sense of rivalry. Pasteur came up with the idea of pasteurizing wine to kill microbes responsible for turning wine. His idea that boiling wine would kill the bad microbes and save the good ones was revolutionary and saved the wine industry. In addition, Pasteur proved that germs can be artificially attenuated to create vaccines that confer immunity, most famously in his rabies vaccine that he gave to a young boy that had been bitten by a rabid animal.

On the other side of the field was Dr. Robert Koch. He formalized the process for hunting microbes and formulated “Koch’s postulates” to establish if an organism is the cause of a disease. His postulates were applied to tuberculosis bacillus, vibrio cholera and a number of other deadly diseases that plagued 19th century Europe. The main difference between Koch and Pasteur was in the way they conducted their research: Pasteur prepared his experiments in liquids and Koch used agar gel in a Petri dish to grow his cultures. The two men together disproved the idea of spontaneous generation and by the end of the 19th century, thanks to their work, Germ Theory was accepted and remains one of the greatest successes of laboratory medicine. With Germ theory’s acceptance laboratory medicine, medical practice and public health converged. How much did Koch and Pasteur’s rivalry influence the hastened creation of a new field of science: bacteriology?

Pasteur’s support of germ theory influenced a doctor named Joseph Lister. Lister realized that the minute organisms that Pasteur had described could be killed through the use of carbolic acid as a disinfectant. Lister’s most important contribution was showing that carbolic acid applied to compound fractures would prevent the victim from needing an amputation due to septicemia. I thought it was interesting that germ theory and anesthesia were readily accepted, yet the simple act of trying to maintain an anti-septic environment was met with resistance. The act of washing one’s hands before surgery, an action that has become automatic, was a revolutionary idea in Lister’s time. I wonder why doctors and surgeons were so resistant to adopting Lister’s idea of antiseptic. I know that it must have been annoying to smell carbolic acid as it was being sprayed, but I would have thought that the patient outcomes would be evidence enough to support Lister’s claims. Surgeon’s tradition of conservatism might make sense, as the Galen model of medicine was used for nearly 1000 years before the ideas were finally rejected. I wonder if Lister was unpopular in the academy and it was more about politics than his discovery that prevented his ideas from disseminating more rapidly. Even with the advent of anesthetics to make surgery more tolerable, real improvements in mortality rate were not seen until after widespread use of antiseptic and aseptic techniques. Why did it take doctors so long to realize that pus was not a normal part of healing?