germ theory
1
4.0
- noun
- /dʒɜrm ˈθɪəri/
- Specialized
:
teoría germinal
- Understanding germ theory has transformed our approach to public health and hygiene.
- the germ theory of disease
- the new germ theory
And then you have people who again at the very top ranks thought the germ theory of disease was complete nonsense.
- And then you have people who again at the very top ranks thought the germ theory of disease was complete nonsense.
- We then have the first great Roman plague because these people, they have no germ theory.
- However, despite the obvious, germ theory was upheld by the establishment, and bacteria was named as the prime culprits.
- When you the germ theory, some people are going to think that means that they don't believe in germs.
- You know, this was before antibiotics, before I think germ theory might have been, you know, it was known, but there wasn't much to do about it.
- Everything from germ theory to, you know, the, the planet orbiting around the sun, you know, So that's not surprising.
Examples
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The two key figures involved in proposing and disseminating this new "germ theory of disease" were the fathers of microbiology, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.
Academic text (2015) -
Reformers after the Civil War campaigned to remove filth from cities and advocated public health laws and regulations; the development of the germ theory of disease in the last decades of the nineteenth century ensured their success.
Academic text (2015) -
So what is germ theory and how did it come about?
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Without a germ theory of disease, we would have little reason to distinguish among them.
Academic text (1999) -
It's impossible to think of the rise of the germ theory of disease without microscopy.
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Faced with the growing evidence in favor of germ theory, sanitarians took a pragmatic view of their previous opposition to it.
Academic text (2007) -
By the 1870s, the beginnings of a mature germ theory—that disease is caused by micro-organisms we know as bacteria—was being formed.
Academic text (2007) -
By 1900, as Americans accepted the germ theory of disease and housekeepers struggled to expel dust and dirt from their homes, new understandings of the power of dust magnified its potential perils.
Academic text (2015) -
In the final decade of the nineteenth century, the germ theory of disease gradually became the dominant scientific paradigm of infection, replacing the contagionist and miasmatist theories that had previously been regarded as scientific orthodoxy.
Academic text (2007) -
The germ theory of disease explains how tiny microorganisms cause infections.
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'germ' (microscopic organism, often causing illness) + 'theory' (a set of ideas explaining facts) yields a theory about germs causing disease, which a learner who knows both words can infer. This noun–noun combination follows a common, cross-linguistic pattern (a theory concerning X), so the sense should be immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.
Etymology
Germ theory comes from the idea that tiny living things called germs make people sick. That's why the phrase means the scientific idea that many 'infectious diseases' are caused by these tiny creatures.