Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Pathogens and Semmelweiss
- Pathogens
- Bacteria
- Small living cells
- 1/100th the size of body cells
- Reproduce rapidly
- Make you feel ill
- Damaging your cells
- Producing toxins (poisons)
- Viruses
- Not cells
- 1/100th the size of a bacterium
- Replicate themselves by invading your cells
- Use cells machinery to produce copies
- Burst and releasing new viruses
- Cell damage makes you feel ill
- Defense system
- Platelets
- Help blood clot quickly to seal wounds
- Small fragments of cells
- If blood contains low numbers of
platelets it will clot slowly
- If it gets through
immune system kicks in
- Immune system
- White blood cells
- Travel around the blood
- Patrol for microbes
- Invading a microbe
- Consuming them
- Engulf foreign cells and digest them
- Producing antibodies
- Every invading cell has unique
molecules called antigens on its
surface
- Starts producing proteins called antibodies when
they come across a foreign antigen they lock onto
and kill invading cells- specific to the type of
antigen
- Produces antibodies rapidly and
carries them around the body to kill
similar bacteria or viruses
- If infected again the white blood
cells will produce antibodies and
become naturally immune to
the pathogen
- Producing antitoxins
- Counteract toxins
produced by
invading bacteria
- Semmelweiss
- Women were dying in huge
numbers after childbirth from a
disease called puerperal fever
- He believed it was
doctors spreading
the disease as their
hands were
unwashed from
when they treated
other patients
- Doctors were
made to
wash their
hands in an
antiseptic
solution and
the death
rate dropped
by 10%
- Antiseptic solution killed the
bacteria on doctors' hands. There
was no proof of this so his method
was dropped when he left the
hospital and death rates rose again
- Nowadays we have basic
hygiene, education and new
drugs to control disease