Pasteur at the Academy of Medicine: from hygiene to germ theory

Abstract

In the 19th century, the applications of the scientific discoveries of Louis Pasteur to medicine had difficulty in imposing themselves within the French medical community and its National Academy. Among those concerning infectious diseases, their prevention by hygiene and their etiology by microbes are described here. Louis Pasteur found it difficult to convince and had to fight, to show through the surgical practice of asepsis and examples of infections induced in animal models (anthrax), the modes of transmission of germs and their pathogenicity.

Keywords

• Louis Pasteur
• Hygiene
• Microbe
• Infection
• Academy of Medicine
• Medical doctors