science · 30 April 1878 · 146 years ago
In 1878, Louis Pasteur lectured at the French Academy of Science in support of his germ theory of disease, in which he held that many diseases were caused by tiny organisms. Since he still met with opposition from some scientists, he called their contrary opinions “fatal to medical progress.” Pasteur also described ways to prevent infection, and provided the skeptics with an experiment with which to prove the theory to themselves.
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