section_path: Germ theory of disease
section_name: Germ theory of disease
paragraph_text: Germ theory of disease
  
  In Antiquity, the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BCE) was the first person to write, in his account of the plague of Athens, that diseases could spread from an infected person to others. In his On the Different Types of Fever (c. 175 AD), the Greco-Roman physician Galen speculated that plagues were spread by "certain seeds of plague", which were present in the air. In the Sushruta Samhita, the ancient Indian physician Sushruta theorized: "Leprosy, fever, consumption, diseases of the eye, and other infectious diseases spread from one person to another by sexual union, physical contact, eating together, sleeping together, sitting together, and the use of same clothes, garlands and pastes." This book has been dated to about the sixth century BC.
  
  A basic form of contagion theory was proposed by Persian physician Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in Europe) in The Canon of Medicine (1025), which later became the most authoritative medical textbook in Europe up until the 16th century. In Book IV of the Canon, Ibn Sina discussed epidemics, outlining the classical miasma theory and attempting to blend it with his own early contagion theory. He mentioned that people can transmit disease to others by breath, noted contagion with tuberculosis, and discussed the transmission of disease through water and dirt. The concept of invisible contagion was later discussed by several Islamic scholars in the Ayyubid Sultanate who referred to them as najasat ("impure substances"). The fiqh scholar Ibn al-Haj al-Abdari (c. 1250 –1336), while discussing Islamic diet and hygiene, gave warnings about how contagion can contaminate water, food, and garments, and could spread through the water supply, and may have implied contagion to be unseen particles.
  
  When the Black Death bubonic plague reached Al-Andalus in the 14th century, the Arab physicians Ibn Khatima (c. 1369) and Ibn al-Khatib (1313–1374) hypothesised that infectious diseases were caused by "minute bodies" and described how they can be transmitted through garments, vessels and earrings. Ideas of contagion became more popular in Europe during the Renaissance, particularly through the writing of the Italian physician Girolamo Fracastoro. Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723) advanced the science of microscopy by being the first to observe microorganisms, allowing for easy visualization of bacteria.
  
  In the mid-19th century John Snow and William Budd did important work demonstrating the contagiousness of typhoid and cholera through contaminated water. Both are credited with decreasing epidemics of cholera in their towns by implementing measures to prevent contamination of water. Louis Pasteur proved beyond doubt that certain diseases are caused by infectious agents, and developed a vaccine for rabies. Robert Koch provided the study of infectious diseases with a scientific basis known as Koch's postulates. Edward Jenner, Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin developed effective vaccines for smallpox and polio, which would later result in the eradication and near-eradication of these diseases, respectively. Alexander Fleming discovered the world's first antibiotic, penicillin, which Florey and Chain then developed. Gerhard Domagk developed sulphonamides, the first broad spectrum synthetic antibacterial drugs.