ABSTRACT
Xavier Bichat and his colleagues in the University of Paris extended Hunter’s observations by describing the universal appearance of acute inflammation within internal structures such as the serous membranes covering the heart, lung and abdominal organs and the mucous membrane of the gut. The concept that certain diseases were contagious predated the work of Pasteur by centuries, but the agents of contagion were constructs of a highly theoretical nature. By the mid-nineteenth century, bacteria had been described by microscopists, and terms such as bacillus, vibrio, bacterium and spirochaete were introduced prior to the work of Pasteur. However, diseases that are now known to be caused by infective agents were still classified as being either contagious or due to miasma, or to a problematical combination of the two. Once the reaction known as inflammation was shown to be a defensive response to invasion of the body by pathogenic micro-organisms, researchers began to uncover the underlying mechanisms involved.
