PRESENTED BY:

SHRUTHI K
FIRST M.SC MICROBIOLOGY
PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY
 JOSEPH LISTER
 Joseph Lister was born in Essex, England, on April 5,
1827 to Joseph Jackson Lister, an amateur scientist.

 Lister obtained Bachelor’s degrees in Medicine and

Surgery. He also became a Fellow of the Royal College of
Surgeons (FRCS) in 1852.

 In 1853, Lister went to Edinburgh, Scotland, to spend four

weeks with Professor James Syme, who was considered
to be the greatest teacher of surgery at that time and
became his assistant.

 In the Edinburgh Hospital where Lister worked, almost half

of the surgery patients died from infection. In some
hospitals in Europe, as many as 80 per cent died.
 Scientists were convinced that nothing could be done
about this due to widespread belief of spontaneous
generation theory. Lister was not convinced.

 Lister compared patients with simple and compound

fractures. Simple fractures do not involve an external
wound.

 Compound fractures are those where the broken bone

pierces the skin and is exposed to the air. More than half
of these patients died. Lister reasoned that somehow the
infection must enter the wound from the outside.

 Therefore, Lister began washing his hands before

operating, and wearing clean clothes to prevent
contamination.
 Lister read works of Louis Pasteur and understood that
germs that entered from outside caused the problem and
demonstrated that life arose from life.
 He hypothesized that If infection arose spontaneously
within a wound, it would be virtually impossible to
eliminate it.
 However, if germs entering from the air outside the wound
caused infection, then those germs could be killed and
infection prevented.
 Unlike Pasteur who used heat to kill the microbes, Lister
used carbolic acid to wash hands, instruments and the
bandages.
 After more than a year of using and refining these
techniques, Lister had sufficient data to show that his
methods were a success. He published his findings in the
medical journal, The Lancet, in 1867.
JOSEPH LISTER LISTER SPRAYING PHENOL
ON PATIENT
 ROBERT KOCH
 Robert Koch was born on December 11, 1843, in
Clausthal, Germany to a mining engineer.

 He chose a career in medicine while studying at the

University of Gottingen.
 In Gottingen, he learned under the tutelage of Henle,
Meissner, Wohler, and Krause.

 While a student, he won a research prize for his study on

neuronal innervation of the uterus. This allowed him to
travel to Hanover where he encountered Germany’s
most renowned physician, Rudolf Virchow.
 He graduated from the university cum extrema lauda in
1866
 During that time, Louis Pasteur had discovered that
bacteria cause putrefaction; Joseph Lister had developed
techniques of antiseptic surgery.

 Jacob Henle, Koch’s anatomy teacher in Göttingen, was

defending the idea which held that disease could be
caused by living transferable entities.

 In Wollstein, Koch was appointed district medical officer.

While maintaining his clinical practice, he began
investigating a major health problem—anthrax.

 He discovered that inoculating a mouse with blood from a

sheep that had died of anthrax caused the mouse to die
the following day. At autopsy, rod-shaped structures were
present in the blood, lymph nodes, and spleen
 By repeating these inoculations, Koch could propagate
anthrax rods over dozens of generations.

 Koch hypothesized that these were living bacteria, which

propagated by elongation and fission. He noted that their
presence was required for disease transmission.

 Koch developed techniques of artificial culture that allowed

him to observe changes in bacteria over time. He found
that inoculating the cornea of a rabbit with bacteria-laden
fluid caused the aqueous humor to become turbid and it
acted as culture media.

 Using a petroleum lamp, a humid chamber, an incubator,

and vegetable oil for a seal, he could control the
temperature, humidity, and aeration of his specimens.
 KOCH POSTULATES
 The organism must always be present, in every case of
the disease.

 The organism must be isolated from a host containing the

disease and grown in pure culture.

 Samples of the organism taken from pure culture must

cause the same disease when inoculated into a healthy,
susceptible animal in the laboratory.

 The organism must be isolated from the inoculated

animal and must be identified as the same original
organism first isolated from the originally diseased host.
 In Europe, tuberculosis was responsible for one out of
seven deaths. Suspecting that tuberculosis was caused by
bacteria resistant to conventional stains, Koch
experimented with new stains.

 Using Ehrlich’s methylene blue stain, he detected a few

tiny rods in tuberculosis tissue. When he added a brown
counterstain for photographic contrast, he ‘uncovered’
more bacteria. Koch had discovered the tubercle bacillus.

 The bacilli were always present in tuberculosis disease,

but not in normal states. Moreover, they always preceded
tubercle formation, appearing before the arrival of giant
cells and caseation.
 They were numerous when the tuberculosis process was
incipient or progressive, and rare when it was quiescent.
 He discovered that under optimal conditions – a warm,
moist, aerated environment – the bacteria would swell,
elongate, and form long filaments with refractile spheres.

 When the fluid was reconstituted with aqueous humor,

bacteria emerged from the spheres. Koch hypothesized
that the spheres were endospores which caused anthrax.

 He discovered that he could ‘fix’ and visualise bacteria to

a slide by drying them in liquid solution and by applying
dyes like eosin, fuchsin and safranin.

 He became the first physician to use an oil immersion

lens, the first to use a condenser, and the first to publish
photographs of bacteria.
 Koch detected the bacilli in the sputum and lung cavities of
consumptives. He found that he could induce disease in
healthy animals by inoculating them with infected sputum.
He concluded that sputum was the principal source of
transmitted disease

 Although the bacilli could not multiply outside a living host,

in dried sputum they retained their pathogenicity for
weeks. Proper disposal of infected sputum and
decontamination of the environment were, therefore,
essential to disease prevention

 On March 24, 1882, Koch presented his findings on

tuberculosis at a meeting of the Berlin Physiological
Society and it was considered one of the most influential.
In 1904, Koch was awarded the Nobel Prize.
 Cholera was endemic in India and had spread to Egypt. Koch
began his research on this.

 Koch began by examining the intestinal mucosa of the deceased

and identified a a comma-shaped aerobic and motile bacillus.
With nourishment it could survive outside the body
 He conducted almost a hundred autopsies, and found the bacilli
in the distal small bowel, where intestinal disease was greatest.

 He traced seventeen cases of cholera to a nearby water tank,

which had been used by local residents for drinking, washing,
and waste disposal.

 Intestinal exposure to contaminated water caused disease in

susceptible hosts. Koch’s discovery meant that access to clean
water was necessary to prevent the spread of cholera.
 Later, Koch's attempt at developing a drug to treat
tuberculosis, tuberculin, led to a scandalous failure: he did
not divulge the exact composition, and the claimed
treatment success did not materialize; the substance is
today used for tuberculosis diagnosis.
 He also studied malaria in new guinea.
 EDWARD JENNER
 Edward Jenner was born on May 17, 1749, in Berkeley,
Gloucestershire.
 At age 13 he was apprenticed to a country surgeon and
apothecary in Sodbury, near Bristol.

 The record shows that it was there that Jenner heard a

dairymaid say, “I shall never have smallpox for I have had
cowpox. I shall never have an ugly pockmarked face.”

 Jenner was so interested in natural science that he helped

classify many species that Captain Cook brought back
from his first voyage.

 He studied geology and carried out experiments on human

blood. Jenner built and twice launched his own hydrogen
balloon. It flew 12 miles.
 Jenner conducted a particular study of the cuckoo and
found that cuckoo hatchling evicts the eggs and chicks of
the foster parents from the nest.
 Jenner was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.

 In biology, Jenner devised an improved method for

preparing a medicine known as tartar emetic (potassium
antimony tartrate).

 Jenner returned to Berkeley to practice medicine where he

enjoyed continued success and his interest in observing
migration patterns of birds continued.

 In 1796 he made the first step in the long process whereby

smallpox, the scourge of mankind, would be totally
eradicated.
 For many years, he had heard the tales that dairymaids were
protected from smallpox naturally after having suffered from
cowpox.

 Pondering this, Jenner concluded that cowpox not only

protected against smallpox but also could be transmitted from
one person to another as a deliberate mechanism of
protection.

 In May 1796, Edward Jenner found a young dairymaid, Sarah

Nelms, who had fresh cowpox lesions on her hands and arms.

 Using matter from Nelms' lesions, he inoculated an 8-year-old

boy, James Phipps. Subsequently, the boy developed mild
fever and discomfort in the axillae. Nine days after the
procedure he felt cold and had lost his appetite, but on the next
day he was much better.
 In July 1796, Jenner inoculated the boy again, this time
with matter from a fresh smallpox lesion. No disease
developed, and Jenner concluded that protection was
complete.

 In 1797, Jenner sent a short communication to the Royal

Society describing his experiment and observations.
However, the paper was rejected.

 Jenner privately published a small booklet entitled An

Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae
Vaccinae.

 The Latin word for cow is vacca, and cowpox is vaccinia;

Jenner decided to call this new procedure vaccination.
 In the first part Jenner presented his view regarding the
origin of cowpox as a disease of horses transmitted to
cows. The theory was discredited during Jenner's lifetime.

 He then presented the hypothesis that infection with

cowpox protects against subsequent infection with
smallpox.

 In London, vaccination became popular through the

activities of others, particularly the surgeon Henry Cline,
to whom Jenner had given some of the inocculant.

 Jenner conducted a nationwide survey in search of proof

of resistance to smallpox or to variolation among persons
who had cowpox. The results of this survey confirmed his
theory.
 Despite errors, many controversies, and chicanery, the
use of vaccination spread rapidly in England, and by the
year 1800, it had also reached most European countries.

 Although he received worldwide recognition and many

honors, Jenner made no attempt to enrich himself through
his discovery.

 The extraordinary value of vaccination was publicly

acknowledged in England, when in 1802 the British
Parliament granted Edward Jenner the sum of £10,000.
Five years later the Parliament awarded him £20,000
more.

 Gradually, vaccination replaced variolation, which became

prohibited in England in 1840.
 REFERENCES
1. https://answersingenesis.org/creation-scientists/joseph-
lister-father-of-modern-surgery/
2. Robert Koch and the 'golden age' of bacteriology
Blevins S.M., Bronze M.S.(2010) International Journal
of Infectious Diseases, 14 (9) , pp. e744-e751.
3. The myth of the medical breakthrough: smallpox,
vaccination, and Jenner reconsidered. C. P. Gross, K. A.
Sepkowitz, Int J Infect Dis. 1998 Jul-Sep; 3(1): 54–60
4. Edward Jenner and the history of smallpox and
vaccination, Stefan Riedel Proc (Bayl Univ Med
Cent) 2005 Jan; 18(1): 21–25. PMCID: PMC1200696
5. Baxby D. The Jenner bicentenary; still uses for smallpox
vaccine. Epidemiology and Infection. 1996;116(3):231-
234.