MICROBIOLOGY AND PARASITOLOGY
MICROBIOLOGY ➢ Hippocrates and his heirs are believed to
TOPIC OUTLINE
1 ANCIENT IDEA OF MICROORGANISMS
2 DEBUNKING OF SPONTANEOUS
GENERATION
3 WHAT IS BIOLOGY?
4 MICROBIOLOGY
5 BRIEF HISTORY OF MICROBIOLOGY
6 MICROBIOLOGY IN 21ST CENTURY
7 MICROBIOLOGY : SIGNIFICANCE IN
NURSING
8 MICROBIOLOGY : CLINICAL FOCUS
ANCIENT IDEA OF MICROORGANISMS
SPONTANEOUS GENERATION
➢ be traced back to the ancient Greeks and
was widely accepted through the Middle
Ages.
➢ refers to the previously popular thinking
that a living thing could arise or develop
from a non-living thing
➢ the notion that life can arise from
nonliving matter
GREEK PHILOSOPHER ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC)
➢ one of the earliest recorded scholars to
articulate the theory of spontaneous
generation
➢ proposed that life arose from nonliving
material if the material contained
pneuma (“vital heat”).
DEBUNKING OF SPONTANEOUS
GENERATION
Even before the invention of the
microscope, some doctors, philosophers,
and scientists made great strides in
understanding the invisible forces—what
we now know as microbes
GREEK PHYSICIAN HIPPOCRATES (460-370 BC)
➢ “father of Western medicine“
➢ Unlike many of his ancestors and
contemporaries, he dismissed the idea
that disease was caused by supernatural
forces.
➢ Instead, he posited that diseases had
natural causes from within patients or
their environments.
have written the Hippocratic Corpus.
➢ often credited as the author of the
Hippocratic Oath, taken by new
physicians to pledge their dedication to
diagnosing and treating patients without
causing harm.
GREEK PHILOSOPHER AND HISTORIAN
THUCYDIDES (460-395 BC)
➢ father of scientific history
➢ he advocated for evidence-based
analysis of cause-and-effect reasoning
➢ important contribution : his observations
regarding the Athenian plague that killed
one-third of the population of Athens
between 430 and 410 BC
➢ Having survived the epidemic himself,
Thucydides made the important
observation that survivors did not get re-
infected with the disease, even when
taking care of actively sick people.
➢ This observation shows an early
understanding of the concept of
immunity.
MARCUS TERENTIUS VARRO (116-27 BC)
➢ a prolific Roman writer
➢ one of the first people to propose the
concept that things we cannot see (what
we now call microorganisms) can cause
disease
➢ In Res Rusticae (On Farming), published
in 36 BC, he said that “precautions must
also be taken in neighborhood swamps. .
. because certain minute creatures
[animalia minuta] grow there which
cannot be seen by the eye, which float in
the air and enter the body through the
mouth and nose and there cause serious
diseases.”
DEBUNKING OF SPONTANEOUS
GENERATION
microbes → cause infection, disease, and
death
Hippocratic → a collection of texts that
Corpus make up some of the oldest
surviving medical books.
Hippocratic → , taken by new physicians to
Oath pledge their dedication to
diagnosing and treating
patients without causing harm.
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Athenian → event that killed one-third of
plague the population of Athens
between 430 and 410 BC
Res Rusticae → book by Marcus Varro that
(On was published in 36 BC.
Farming)
animalia → minute creatures which
minuta grow on neighborhood swamps
that cannot be seen by the
naked eye and float in the air
→ enter the body thru mouth
and nose
ARISTOTLE EXPERIMENTATION BY FRANCESCO REDI (1626 –
1697)
➢ seventeenth century
➢ presented the first significant evidence
refuting spontaneous generation by
showing that flies must have access to
meat for maggots to develop on the
meat.

HIPPOCRATES

WHAT IS BIOLOGY?
BIOLOGY
→ study of living things
→ Viruses are included because they are alive
when inside the host cell.
MICROORGANISMS
→ aka. Microbes, germs
THUCYDIDES
→ living things that are too small to be seen by
the unaided eye.
→ It wasn’t until the invention of the
microscope that their existence was
definitively confirmed.

MARCUS VARRO

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MICROBIOLOGY 1796 → John Jenner created a vaccine for

smallpox
→ A SCIENCE
→ study of microorganisms
→ development of microbiology as a science :
allowed man to control harmful microbes and use
others for his benefit.

MICROORGANISMS
➢ the foundation for all life on Earth
➢ Life on Earth started with early
microorganisms
➢ The activities of microorganisms are
responsible for the survival of all other
organisms

ACTIVITIES INVOLVED BY MICROORGANISMS

✓ Nitrogen
✓ Oxygen
✓ Molecular breakdown (putrefaction)
1847 → Ignatz Semmelweiss pioneered hand
washing
BRIEF HISTORY OF MICROBIOLOGY

SUBTOPIC 1
1674 → Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek
discovered microorganisms

Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

➢ A merchant who had optics
for a hobby.
➢ He was able to view small
objects with the lens he
developed.
➢ He reported what he
observed as “animacules“
to the Royal Academy of
Science.
➢ Unfortunately, he did not
share his secret technique
of lens making.
1859 → Louis Pasteur, a French chemist,
disproved spontaneous generation of
microorganisms (Germ Theory).
→ He showed that individual microbial
strains had unique properties and
demonstrated that fermentation is
caused by microorganisms.
→ He also invented pasteurization.

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PASTEURIZATION EXAMPLES OF KOCH’S DISCOVERIES

- a process used to kill
microorganisms
responsible for spoilage,
and developed vaccines for
the treatment of diseases,
including rabies, in animals
and humans.
Bacteria that cause :
✓ anthrax (Bacillus anthracis)
✓ cholera (Vibrio cholera)
✓ tuberculosis (Mycobacterium
tuberculosis)

KOCH’S POSTULATE

1865 → Joseph Lister introduced antiseptic

techniques
1892 → Dmitri Iwanoski discovered Tobacco
Mosaic Virus.

1894 → Paul Ehrlich articulated the principle

1876 → Robert Koch, a German physician, of selective toxicity.
proved that specific microbes cause
specific disease (Koch’s Postulate)

→ He was the first to demonstrate the

connection between a single, isolated
microbe and a known human disease.

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BRIEF HISTORY : PANDEMICS

➢ More people died of diseases caused by

microorganisms

DISEASES INVOLVED
✓ Influenza
✓ Smallpox
✓ Plague
1929 → Alexander Fleming discovered
penicillin. ➢ AIDS
➢ COVID-19
➢ Modern sanitation, vaccination, and
antibiotics greatly reduced the incidence

541–549: Plague of Justinian

1928 → Griffith discovers genetic

transformation in bacteria. ➢ Plague of Justinian or Justinianic Plague
1944 → Avery, McLeod, and McCarty (541–549 AD)
demonstrated DNA. ➢ the beginning of the first plague
1953 → Watson, Crick, Franklin and Wilkins pandemic, the first Old World pandemic
determined DNA structure. of plague, the contagious disease caused
1971 → Diener demonstrated the by the bacterium Yersinia pestis.
fundamental difference between viroids ➢ The disease afflicted countries as follows
and viruses.
1973 → Boyer and Cohen cloned DNA. COUNTRIES AFFLICTED BY THE PLAGUE
1977 → Woese, et al. classified all organisms ✓ Entire Mediterranean Basin
into three domains. ✓ Europe
1980 → WHO declared eradication of ✓ Near East, severely affecting the Sasanian
smallpox in the world. Empire and the Byzantine Empire and
1982 → Prusiner discovered the prion. especially its capital, Constantinople.

→ Marshall discovered H. pylori. ➢ The plague is named for the Byzantine

1983 → Montagnier and Gallo isolated and emperor in Constantinople, Justinian I
described HIV.
2001 → Bioterrorism was waged in US.

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1346–1353: Black Death
➢ also known as the Pestilence, the Great
Mortality or the Plague
➢ was a bubonic plague pandemic
occurring in Afro-Eurasia
➢ It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in
human history, causing the death of 75–
200 million people in Eurasia and North
Africa, peaking in Europe from 1347 to
1351.
1918 influenza pandemic – also known as
The Spanish flu
➢ Influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1
influenza A virus.
➢ Lasting from February 1918 to April 1920,
it infected 500 million people – about a
third of the world's population at the time
– in four successive waves.
➢ The death toll is typically estimated to
have been somewhere between 20
million and 50 million, although estimates
range from a conservative 17 million to a
possible high of 100 million, making it one
of the deadliest pandemics in human
history
1981–present: HIV/AIDS pandemic
➢ HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has
become one of the world“s most serious
health and development challenges
since the first cases were reported in 1981.
➢ Approximately 76 million people have
become infected with HIV since the start
of the epidemic.
➢ Today, there are approximately 38
million people currently living with HIV,
and tens of millions of people have died of
AIDS-related causes since the beginning
of the epidemic.
2019–present: Corona Virus
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MICROBIOLOGY IN 21ST CENTURY
FIELDS
1 Medical / Clinical
2 Parasitological
3 Sanitation
4 Industrial
5 Environmental
6 Genetics
7 Physiological
8 Paleomicrobiology
9 Agricultural
10 Veterinary
MICROBIOLOGY : SIGNIFICANCE IN
NURSING
SIGNIFICANCE IN NURSING
1 All surfaces of the human body are
populated with microorganisms (10X the
number of body cells)
2 Knowledge of microbiology helps a nurse
in every field of health care.
3 Nurses should have known about the
mode of spread of infection. This
knowledge would help a nurse to look for
specific control of the spread of infection.
4 Knowledge of medical microbiology would
help them to understand the difference
between the causative organism of
disease and patient’s normal flora.
5 A nurse must know procedures used to
create and maintain a sterile field in the
hospitals based on the knowledge of
microbiology
6 The principles of asepsis are also based on
microbiology.
7 The proper disposal of biomedical waste is
equally important, and knowledge of
microbiology helps in this field also.
8 The nurse must recognize the importance
of the proper collection of specimens to be
sent for bacteriological examination to
obtain accurate results.
9 One of the most important things is hand
washing which helps in reducing surgical
infections and transmission of diseases in
hospitals.
10 Nurses also play an important role in
immunization to control threats of various
diseases.
11 She/he follows not only aseptic techniques
but also uses sterile equipment while
looking after such patients.
12 It is the duty of a nurse to ensure that the
atmosphere of the operation theatre is
free of microorganisms.
13 The nurse can play a role while the female
needs antenatal care, help during delivery
or after giving birth for six weeks called as
puerperium.
14 A nurse must have sound knowledge of the
sterilization methods and controls of
sterilization so that good quality could be
maintained while providing nursing care.
MICROBIOLOGY : CLINICAL FOCUS
CLINICAL FOCUS
1 A patient has recently been experiencing
severe headaches, a high fever, and a stiff
neck. Patient also seems confused at times
and unusually drowsy.
Based on these symptoms, the doctor
suspects that the patient may have
meningitis, a potentially life-
threatening infection of the tissue that
surrounds the brain and spinal cord.
*Meningitis
• has several potential causes.
• It can be brought on by
bacteria, fungi, viruses, or even
a reaction to medication or
exposure to heavy metals.
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2 The doctor orders a lumbar puncture
(spinal tap) to take three samples of
cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from around the
spinal cord.

The samples will be sent to laboratories in

three different departments for testing:
clinical chemistry, microbiology, and
hematology.

STEPS
✓ The samples will first be visually
examined to determine whether
the CSF is abnormally colored or
cloudy
✓ then the CSF will be examined
under a microscope to see if it
contains a normal number of red
and white blood cells and to check
for any abnormal cell types.

In the microbiology lab, the specimen

will be centrifuged to concentrate any
cells in a sediment; this sediment will be
smeared on a slide and stained with a
Gram stain.

*Gram staining
• a procedure used to
differentiate between two
different types of bacteria
(gram-positive and gram-
negative).

The Gram stain did not show any

bacteria, but the doctor decides to
prescribe her antibiotics just in case.

Part of the CSF sample will be cultured—

put in special dishes to see if bacteria or
fungi will grow.
*It takes some time for most
microorganisms to reproduce in
sufficient quantities to be detected and
analyzed.

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