by Danielle Dusold

Created on: December 05, 2008

Before there were computers, cars, cell phones, hospitals, even humans all together, there were microbes. Microbes have played a huge role in the history of mankind and continue to be a major player in medicine, food and drug development, and disease. Evidence of microbiology can be found in the Bible, historical Greek and Roman writings, and was the cause of the Black Plague.

The bible makes numerous references to leprosy and those who have been infected with leprosy, known as lepers. Leprosy is caused by Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. We know now that leprosy was a term used to cover a wide range of infectious and non-infectious diseases, but the isolation of infected individuals did slow the spread of the disease, which they figured out long before a microscope was ever available. In addition to leprosy, the plague was also referenced in the bible, as well as good sanitary practices to prevent disease.

Babylonians and Egyptians were using microbes thousands of years ago to make food products. There has been beer recipes found in 6000 year old Egyptian hieroglyphics. In modern day Iran, the earliest known records of making wine were found, dating back as far as 5000 years ago. Hippocrates was a Greek Physician in 400 B.C. that set a standard for the world of medicine. He found the various symptoms of disease and found that some diseases were contagious. During this same time, a lesser known Greek, Thucydides, found that people who got the plague and survived could care for other victims of the plague without contracting it again. The Romans also had their share of historical roots in microbiology. Varro, a Roman writer, stated that tiny animals caused disease in humans. Lucretius, a Roman poet, talked about "seeds" of disease in his famous work On The Nature of Things, or De Rerum Natura.

The bubonic plague has been the cause of death for millions of people around the world. It's been named "The Black Death" and first occurred in the Mediterranean area around A.D. 542. It went on to become an epidemic, killing millions of people. Around 1347, the bubonic plague took hold in Europe, where it is estimated that over tens of millions of people died over a 300 year span. Interestingly, the Jewish population had much higher survival rates than gentiles, because Jews practiced better sanitary practices, including more frequent bathing and not using dirty surgical tools when someone did get the plague, but rather using herbal medicines. As the

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