What would the human race be like if we did not have some of today's modern medicines? It would probably be just like it was 200 years ago. Doctors "claiming" to know cures forsome of the world's most infectious diseases, and then treating them in the some of themost inhuman ways. People would be dieing from infections left and right. And even
worse, we would not know how to cure most of their diseases. The world populationwould probably be half the size that it is today. But, thanks to the "Golden Age ofMicrobiology", and the people who tried to find cures and such, we now have ways to over come most of the world's diseases.
The "Golden Age" was only 20 years long, from 1880 to about 1900. It was the
time when about three scientists helped to better science's technologies and cures. The
first of these three was Pasteur. Some of his contributions to science were the creation of
silk and a cure for rabies. But one of the most important of all of his findings was the idea
of pasteurization. Around the time of 1870, there was a problem with the making of beer
and wine. The companies could not figure out a way to keep their products from
becoming sour. Pasteur then came up with the idea of adding many different elements to
the products and then refrigerating them for a long period of time. Thus came the idea of
The second out of the three was Robert Koch. Koch was mostly into the study of
microbiology and bacteriology. Most of his researching was done under the microscope,
but he realized that he could not totally determine what a certain bacteria classified as. He
discovered that if you were to add a stain to slide that you would be able to make out the
bacteria about 10x better. Koch also noticed that sometimes you can't always find
bacteria in just one sample of something that is contaminated. So, he came up with the
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