Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/150

134 134 A Short History of Nursing The life work of Louis Pasteur (i 822-1 895), the French chemist who announced and demonstrated ^ . the part played by microscopic forms medicine of life in the processes of fermentation and in the development of infectious surgery diseases, brought about a revolution in medicine that has had no parallel since the day when Hippocrates denied the influence of demons as the cause of illness. The natural causes declared by Hippocrates were demonstrated and explained by Pasteur, who, beginning with the fermentative processes in fruits and plants, went on to the study of virus ferments, antitoxins, inoculation, and immunity. Pasteur was not a physician, but al- though his revelations completely undermined the current orthodox medical belief in spontaneous generation, he was acclaimed and revered by all the great medical men of his day, and was made an associate member of the French Academy of Medicine. There he expounded year by year his progressive discoveries. The year 1863 is taken as the date of formal announcement of the germ theory. Pasteur's earliest studies of fermentation were seized upon by Joseph Lister (1827-1910), the eminent English surgeon, and applied by him so successfully in the technique of surgical work, that Lister's name became as renowned as that