Germ Theory Is Older Than You Think

People have been trying to prevent the spread of infectious disease forever, yet we only got germ theory in the 19th century. Except for one 16th century Italian doctor, who got it exactly right and was immediately forgotten. This video was inspired by Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe, a new book by Carl Zimmer. If you’d like to check it out, head to https://bookshop.org/lists/scishow-recommended-reading. Made in partnership with The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Sources: Air-borne, by Carl Zimmer https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-physician-who-presaged-the-germ-theory-of-disease-nearly-500-years-ago/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24649/ https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/medicine/medicine-biographies/girolamo-fracastoro https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/consumer-health/fracastoro-discovers-contagion-spreads-disease https://taylorandfrancis.com/knowledge/Medicine_and_healthcare/Miscellaneous/Miasma_theory/ ---------- Support us for $8/month on Patreon and keep SciShow going! https://www.patreon.com/scishow Or support us directly: https://complexly.com/support Join our SciShow email list to get the latest news and highlights: https://mailchi.mp/scishow/email ---------- Huge thanks go to the following Patreon supporters for helping us keep SciShow free for everyone forever: David Johnston, Cye Stoner, Jp Lynch, Bethany Matthews, Chris Curry, J.V. Rosenbalm, Alan Wong, Toyas Dhake, Reed Spilmann, Garrett Galloway, Friso, Lyndsay Brown, Jeremy Mattern, Jaap Westera, Matt Curls, Eric Jensen, Chris Mackey, Adam Brainard, Piya Shedden, Steve Gums, Alex Hackman, Kevin Knupp, Chris Peters, Kevin Bealer, Joseph Ruf, Jason A Saslow ---------- Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet? SciShow Tangents Podcast: https://scishow-tangents.simplecast.com/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@scishow Instagram: http://instagram.com/thescishow Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/scishow Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/scishow.bsky.social #SciShow #science #education #learning #complexly ----------