2. Pasteur Becomes Identified As Originator Of Germ Theory

The first "Germ Theory of Infectious Diseases" was published in 1762, by M. A. Plenciz, a Viennese physician. In 1860, Louis Pasteur took the credit for the experiments and ideas of others, "plagiarizing and distorting their discoveries," according to Dr. Leverson of England. Because of Pasteur's strength, zeal, enthusiasm, and convincing personality, and his passionate determination to overcome opposition to the germ theory, he became identified as its originator.

Claude Bernard (1813-1878) disputed the validity of the germ theory, and maintained that the general condition of the patient's body was the principal factor in disease, but this idea was largely ignored by the medical profession and the general public. Pasteur had done his work well as the suave promoter of a plausible "scientific" hypothesis that could bolster the prestige of the sagging medical profession. Bernard and Pasteur had many debates on the relative importance of the microbe and the internal environment.

Pasteur was a chemist and physicist, and knew very little about biology and life processes, but he was a respected and influential man. His phobic fear of infection, his belief in the "malignity" and "belligerence" of germs, and his powerful influence on his contemporaries, had far-reaching consequences, and men of science were convinced of the threat of the microbe to man. Thus was born the period of bacteriophobia (fear of germs) which still exists.