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The history of virology – the scientific study of viruses and the infections they cause – began in the closing years of the 19th century. Although Edward Jenner and Louis Pasteur developed the first vaccines to protect against viral infections, they did not know that viruses existed.
Abstract. Viral infections have been recorded unknowingly from the beginning of recorded history. The ancient Greeks and Romans described plagues of unknown origin. In general, infections were blamed on sins and punishment, balances of “vital humors” or on “miasma,” (rotten smells).
- Milton W. Taylor
- 2014 Jul
- 10.1007/978-3-319-07758-1_1
Nov 11, 2016 · Virology has its foundations in the initial discoveries of bacteria and related diseases. Up to the 19th century the prevailing view was that diseases of humans and animals were the result of miasmas and other environmental influences.
- Christopher J. Burrell, Colin R. Howard, Frederick A. Murphy
- 10.1016/B978-0-12-375156-0.00001-1
- 2016
- 2017
Aug 28, 2019 · Although infections we now know as, e.g., rabies, yellow fever, smallpox, etc. were clinically evident in early human history, the initial isolation of individual viruses and their assignment to specific diseases did not occur until about 1898, 120 years ago, a proverbial drop in the bucket of time.
- M.B.A. Oldstone
- 10.1016/B978-0-12-801238-3.00078-7
- 2014
- Encyclopedia of Microbiology. 2014 : 608-612.
Oct 1, 2016 · For example, did virology start in 1886 – thus commemorating Mayer's publication on the transmission of mosaic tobacco disease? Or in 1892 – thus taking the work of Ivanovsky on the filterability of the tobacco mosaic virus as a starting point?
- Pierre-Olivier Méthot
- 2016
Virology began when there were no methods for propagating or visualizing viruses or specific laboratory tests for viral infections. The methods for separating viral nucleic acids ( RNA and DNA) and proteins, which are now the mainstay of virology, did not exist.
The evolutionary history of viruses remains unclear. Some researchers hypothesize that viruses evolved from mobile genetic elements that gained the ability to move between cells. Other...
