Topic 1: Brief History of Microbiology

Question 1

Robert Hooke

Answer 1

1660

• Made the first real compound microscope
• Used reflected light

Question 2

Van Leeuwenhoek

Answer 2

Used transmitted light

- first person to see a living bacteria

Question 3

Janssen

Answer 3

First compound microscope but poor magnification

Question 4

John Needham

Answer 4

English biologist who defended abiogenesis

• Infusoria in bioled flasks experiments
• Boiled infusion in flask & sealed (infusoria reappeared)

Question 5

Abiogenesis

Answer 5

The evolution of life from inanimate substances

Question 6

Francesco Redi

Answer 6

• Experiment with meat & cheesecloth
• Uncovered meat gave rise to flies but the covered meat did not
• Cheesecloth let in vital but not flies

Question 7

Infusoria Experiment

Answer 7

John Needman

Question 8

Meat & Cheesecloth Experiment

Answer 8

Francesco Redi

Question 9

Lazzaro Spallanzani

Answer 9

• Same experiment as Needham
• Sealed infusoria-laden broth filled flasks and then boiled it
• No infusoria

Question 10

Louis Pasteur

Answer 10

• Developed heat treatment called “Pasteruization”
• Experiment with straight flask and S-shaped flask
• Microbial growth found in straight flask but not other
• Organisms can’t reach the broth in the S-shaped flask

Question 11

Pasteurization

Answer 11

Treating foods with mild heat to eliminate pathogens

Question 12

Germ Theory

Answer 12

Diseases were thought to be caused by the supernatural

- Ignaz Semmelweis & Joseph Lister

Question 13

Ignaz Semmelweis

Answer 13

Required birthing attendants to wash their hands in a mild bleach solution
“child-birth fever”

Question 14

Joseph Lister

Answer 14

Required surgical instruments to be soaked for a time in phenol
- Decreased post-surgical infections

Question 15

Robert Koch and Pasteur

Answer 15

• Connected microbes to diseases
• Took blood of cattle killed by anthrax
• Found bacillus anthracis in pure culture
• Put it into healthy animal and it got sick and died
• Recovered B. anthracis in pure culture

Question 16

Edward Jenner

Answer 16

Noticed that if you expose people to cow pox, they never get the more serious small pox
- Cow pox virus has surface proteins that are similar to those of small pox virus

Question 17

Pasteur & the cow pox virus

Answer 17

Discovered that although old bacteria lose their ability to cause disease, they still retain their ability to induce immunity

• Treated a young boy that had been exposed to rabies with a vaccine of weakened rabies
• Grew it in a rabbit spinal cord

Question 18

Robert Kocher

Answer 18

Showed the linkage between illness and microbes