Germ
From Free net encyclopedia
- For other senses of the word "germ", see germ (disambiguation).
Germ is an informal term for a pathogen, particularly bacteria (as in germ warfare).
One of the first people to postulate that some diseases were caused by the presence of some kind of very small 'seed' (the original meaning of 'germ') that germinated or multiplied in the body to produce the disease was Ignaz Semmelweis, a Hungarian doctor, practising in an obstetrics ward in the 1840s. He noticed that the death rate of the impoverished women attended by the nurse midwives was many times less than that of the wealthier women attended by the doctors. His observations led him to conclude that it was a matter of cleanliness.