Body & HealthFact
Until 1860, doctors believed disease came from smelly air.
The “miasma theory” blamed foul odours for epidemics. In the 1860s Louis Pasteur used swan-neck flasks to show microbes don't arise spontaneously but come from the air. In 1876 Robert Koch proved with anthrax, for the first time, that a specific germ causes a specific disease.
Useful: Germ theory is under 150 years old – younger than the railway.
Source: en.wikipedia.org