You're listening to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, your escape to reality.

Hello and welcome to the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe, today is Thursday, April 30,

2009, and this is your host, Stephen Novella. Joining me this week are Bob Novella, everybody,

Rebecca Watson.

Hello everyone.

I'm Jay Novella, Oink, and Evan Bernstein. It's funny you want Jay, because on this

date, April 30, 1878, Louis Pasteur, a lecturer 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.

Well, that was a seminal event. Yeah, where's the germ theory now?

Yeah, I'm a flashwood fan. I came in the last past.

That'll never stick.

Could you imagine being the person who came up with the germ theory that's just so tremendous,

it's amazing.

I wonder, did he come up with that completely utterly on his own or were there a few people

before him that kind of like, you know, around the fringes of the idea and he just kind of

put it all together? That happens a lot.

Well, I mean, the notion of a contagion and infectious diseases that some diseases can

be transmitted through some, you know, tiny things existed for hundreds of years before

Pasteur. The idea that there are microscopic organisms was discovered before Pasteur.

And others like Semmelwice, that we're already advocating handwashing as a means of decreasing

the transmission of infectious disease.

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