The germ theory of disease refers to the discovery in the late 19th century that some infectious diseases are caused by microorganisms, small organisms too small to see without magnification, that invade the host. The theory supplanted earlier explanations for disease such as miasma theory.
Read more about Germ Theory Of Disease: History, Sanitation
Famous quotes containing the words germ, theory and/or disease:
“I care not by what measure you end the war. If you allow one single germ, one single seed of slavery to remain in the soil of America, whatever may be your object, depend upon it, as true as effect follows cause, that germ will spring up, that noxious weed will thrive, and again stifle the growth, wither the leaves, blast the flowers, and poison the fair fruits of freedom. Slavery and freedom cannot exist together.”
—Ernestine L. Rose (1810–1892)
“The struggle for existence holds as much in the intellectual as in the physical world. A theory is a species of thinking, and its right to exist is coextensive with its power of resisting extinction by its rivals.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“His poor self,
A dedicated beggar to the air,
With his disease of all-shunned poverty,
Walks, like contempt, alone.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)