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Microbial water quality
Published in Cara Gleeson, Nick Gray, The Coliform Index and Waterborne Disease, 1996
The first microbiological study of drinking water was conducted on a London water supply in 1850 by Hassel, who later published a report entitled A Microscopic Examination of the Water Supplied to the Inhabitants of London and the Greater Districts. In this report, Hassel established a link between sanitary quality and microbiological quality. Similar conclusions were also reached by Cohn in 1853 and by other scientists in the latter half of the nineteenth century. During this same period, the germ theory of disease became firmly established as a result of research by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and others. The idea of specific microbial indicators was developed in the 1880s by Von Fritsch and later by Escherich (Olson and Nagy, 1984).
Scope and History of Microbioiogy
Published in Maria Csuros, Csaba Csuros, Klara Ver, Microbiological Examination of Water and Wastewater, 2018
Maria Csuros, Csaba Csuros, Klara Ver
Before Pasteur, effective treatment of many diseases was discovered by trial and error, but the cause of the diseases was unknown. The idea that microorganisms might cause diseases was called the germ theory of disease. The germ theory was a difficult concept for many to accept because for centuries people believed that disease was a punishment for an individual’s crime or misdeeds. When the inhabitants of an entire village became ill, foul odors from swamps were often blamed for the sickness. Most people born in Pasteur’s time found it inconceivable that invisible microbes could travel through the air to infect plants and animals or remain on clothes and bedding to be transmitted from one person to another.
Advances and challenges in solar-powered wastewater treatment technologies for sustainable development: a comprehensive review
Published in International Journal of Ambient Energy, 2022
Water treatment for drinking purposes is not a new concept rather it is as old as human civilisation. However, the processes adopted for water treatment were not well recognised and generally used charcoal filtration, boiling, straining and sunlight. In the seventeenth century, the filtration was evolved as an effective means of water treatment and so, the earlier water purification was based on the filtration used for removing impurities and colloidal particles. Later in the mid of the eighteenth century, the concept of water treatment gained momentum and become the principal interest among the scientific community. Louis Pasteur explained the germ theory of disease and described the physics of microorganism in disease transmission through water (Pasteur, Joubert, and Chamberland 1878). In the late nineteenth century, the nature of infectious disease was first recognised; however, the requirements of clean water supplies were not well known till then. Thereafter in the late twentieth century, the quality of drinking water remained the pivotal issue particularly in biological science dealing with disease-originating microbes (pathogenic bacteria) (Daszak, Cunningham, and Hyatt 2000; Bhatt et al. 2018). Since last decades, the new water treatment processes have been emerged due to technological advancements in different sectors. Selection of these processes depends on the types of water source (surface or ground water) and purpose for which water is to be treated.
Pasteur’s lifelong engagement with the fine arts: uncovering a scientist’s passion and personality
Published in Annals of Science, 2021
In less than three years, his accumulating intellectual successes, amplified by these scientific prizes, would earn him a teaching position at the ENS and a coveted move to Paris, the centre of French intellectual and social life, including the world of the fine arts. Before the end of the 1857, he presented two more papers on fermentation to the Academy of Sciences, and the following August, while in Arbois, he examined samples of spoiled wine and found microbes similar to those responsible for lactic fermentation. Insights from the fermentation research further broadened the scope of his work, in time producing revolutionary insights—both intellectual and practical—that took Pasteur from chemistry into biology and then into medicine, with new commercial applications including the process called pasteurization and discoveries that helped save France’s wine and beer industries. In time, Pasteur’s studies of fermentation would also lead to antisepsis and a germ theory of disease.