Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was a French chemist and microbiologist who became the face of many scientific practices used today. His discoveries can be categorised into molecular asymmetry, germ theory and immunology. His research has stood the test of time and his legacy remains in the form of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where in 1888 the first ever course in microbiology was taught. Undoubtedly Pasteur has made a name and contribution in science, however; the significance can be questioned in terms of impact on society, validity and ethics. One of Pasteur’s first prominent observations were on crystal morphology and the concepts of chirality, which he discusses in "Mémoire sur la relation qui peut exister entre la forme cristalline et la …show more content…
This becomes apparent when considering the Thalidomide disaster. Thalidomide was a drug developed in 1957 for curing pregnant women of morning sickness, but its enantiomer also expressed teratogenicity (Kim and Scialli, 2011). So despite Pasteur’s work showing that same compounds can express different properties, no action was taken into investigating issues in the human body, where racemization will occur in metabolism, hence demonstrating that perhaps the results of this particular discovery hadn’t had the largest impact on society as one could have …show more content…
Previously it was popular belief that disease was caused by a poisonous mist called Miasma and this particular phenomenon was used to explain all manner of illness, for example the cholera epidemics in Victorian London (Halliday, 2001). Then Pasteur observed that fermentation was actually caused by the growth of microorganisms and that bacteria didn’t just come into existence, but are rather a result of biogenesis. By establishing these key concepts, he developed a process dubbed pasteurization, which involves heating liquids, such as milk, up to a temperature at which bacteria and moulds would die (Pasteur, 1857). Furthermore, this led to the use of antiseptic methods in surgical and lab practice. These investigations were very important to the scientific community, as they persuaded the rest of Europe about Germ Theory and led to more practice in microbiological sciences, as well as encouraged people in medical professions to be more