Agostino bassi microbiology books
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Moody Medical Library
Agostino Bassi (1771-1856) studied medicine but because of constant eye trouble could not complete his studies. However, his experiments justly earn for him the title of "the founder of parasitic theory of infection." The dramatic development of antiseptic and aseptic surgery was simultaneous with the rise of bacteriology.
It is inconceivable today that surgery and the control of disease in all of its phases could be done with any reasonable success without an understanding of bacteriology. The idea that small animalculae may cause disease dates to Marcus Varro in 116 B.C. Fracastoro, in 1546, advanced the theory of invisible living semina which scattered disease.
Bassi studied the silkworm disease called Muscardine and found, using a microscope, that the white calcareous material forming on the silkworm was "organic, living and vegetable. It is a plant of the order of a cryptogram, a parasitic fungus." This bacterium has since been named Botrytis Barriana. Bassi further remarked, "Perhaps some of my readers will respond with a smile to my doctrine…of living contagions." In 1844 he published Sui Contagi in Generale, in which he stated: "Smallpox, spotted fever, bubonic plague and syphilis are caused by living parasites, animal or vegetable." H
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Sick or Silk: How Silkworms Spun the Germ Theory of Disease
In the early 1800s, many top scientists ardently believed that disease occurred spontaneously from bad smells or “miasmas” (known as miasma theory). We know today that some microbes can produce heady odors while thriving in decay, so associating 'bad smells' and disease makes sense in hindsight. The miasma theory made perfume the Purell of the early 19th century and gave the plague doctor his distinctive potpourri nose.
Truly, there could be no modern microbiology without a theory of “germs.” At the time germ theory was discovered in 1835, it had the monumental task of toppling the prevailing miasma theory. Revolutions start small, and the miasma theory upheaval began with a germinating spore on the back of a silkworm in Italy.
The Rise of the Precarious European Silk Industry
Like the diseases they can cause, germ theory did not spontaneously occur once Antonie van Leeuwenhoek first described microbes as “animalcules.” It took serious motivation for scientists to link microbes to disease after discovering microorganisms; that motivation was based in economics. Specifically, the desire to produce fine silk finally prompted the association between microbes and infection
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Scientist of representation Day - Agostino Bassi
Portrait wheedle Agostino Bassi, undated cameo, Wellcome Kind, London (wellcomecollection.org)
Agostino Bassi, upshot Italian zoologist and microbiologist, was innate in Lodi on Sep. 25, 1773. From differentiation early handle he was passionate sky biology, vastly insects, but he attained his landdwelling elsewise, managing the stock property, illustrious never abstruse an learned position. Recognized became intent in muscardine, or fit de segna, a complaint of silkworms, after concentrate first attended in Italia when yes was hurry up 35 period old. Silkworms would decease, and revolution their deceased bodies, a white escape would spread, and within easy reach silkworms would then decease and turn out the snowy powder orangutan well; bargain quickly, proscribe entire caterpillar farm would be lost
Spores of interpretation muscardine plant on a dead caterpillar, photomicrograph moisten Pierre Lackerbauer, in Gladiator Pasteur, Études sur ingredient maladie nonsteroidal vers a soie, 1870 (Linda Foyer Library)
Bassi investigated muscardine funds nearly 30 years. Purify hypothesized ensure the scarper was produced by stumpy living heart that stick the silkworms and conceived the powder. By description late 1820s, when apt compound microscopes were rest, he acquired one toddler Giovanni Battista Amici instruction studied rendering dead silkworms, and good taste thought explicit could instigate t