GERM THEORY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Germ theory

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noun

Germ theory n.

(Biol.) The theory that living organisms can be produced only by the development of living germs. Cf. Biogenesis, Abiogenesis.

(Med.) The theory which attributes contagious and infectious diseases, suppurative lesions, etc., to the agency of germs, i.e. pathogenic microorganisms. The science of bacteriology was developed after this theory had been established.

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Etymology of 'Germ theory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Germ theory" Quotes from Famous Books

... researches and discoveries, and fortified by them and others, has run the germ theory of epidemic disease. The notion was expressed by Kircher, and favoured by Linnaeus, that epidemic diseases may be due to germs which float in the atmosphere, enter the body, and produce disturbance by the development within the body of parasitic life. ...

— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... an army, whose numbers are legion, who worry about their health and that of the members of their family. What with the doctors scaring the life out of them with the germ theory, seeking to obtain legislation to vaccinate them, examine their children nude in school, take out their tonsils, appendices, and other internal organs, inject serums into them for this, that, and the other, and requiring them to observe a score and one maxims ...

— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

Words linked to "Germ theory" : medical specialty