Excess bile, blood and phlegm. Inhaling airborne poisons. Overexcited nerves. From Hippocrates to the age of Louis Pasteur, the medical profession relied on these plausible but almost wholly mistaken ideas of the cause of infectious illness. Few doctors, even by the mid-1800s, realised that different diseases have different causes.
Bleeding, purging and mysterious nostrums remained staple remedies. Surgeons, often wearing butcher's aprons caked in surgical detritus, blithely spread infection from patient to patient. Then, between 1879 and 1900, came the germ revolution.
An explosive burst of scientific discovery suddenly revealed the role of microbes in causing disease. Surgeons at last understood the need for sterile operating conditions and vaccines against many of the most deadly illnesses were developed. Whole new provinces of curative medicine were opened up.
Breathtakingly rapid, the discovery that germs cause disease was both revolutionary and rich in human drama. John Waller describes the scientific virtuosity, outstanding intellectual courage and bitter personal rivalries that gave birth to this exceptional sea-change in scientific thinking.
