Początki naukowej toksykologii roślin i jej wpływ na narodziny koncepcji drobnoustrojowego pochodzenia chorób

This work shows the birth of the concept of the microbial origin of disease in the 19th century, as influenced by earlier advances in the knowledge of drugs and poisons. It attempts to understand the essence of ancient medical theories (about miasmas, contagions, hospital infections, venoms of infectious diseases) by understanding the dosage forms of old anti-plague remedies and prophylactic behaviours. The ancient term miasma represented a pathogenic gas. It was considered a chemical poison and called aër, vapor or halitus in the 18th-century toxicology. Such a nature demanded to admit that gas retained its infectious nature in significant dilutions, which contradicted chemical knowledge. The 16thcentury term cont agium was an idea of contact infection and any other one caused by visible pathogenic matter. In the 19th century, hospital-acquired gangrene was thought to be transmitted by evaporating excretions and thus ultimately by the polluted air of hospital wards. This delayed the recognition of contagion as both contact infection and contamination of objects. In 1785, J. Plenck divided poisons into dose-dependent and dose-independent ones. The former were vegetable and inorganic chemical poisons. The latter caused infectious diseases, which he called virus. The idea of microorganisms was born only after the multiplication of chemical poisons was questioned. This required to assume that a pathogenic “poison” is produced in minute cells, living and able to reproduce. Hahnemann’s theory did not fi t with the concept of the microbial origin of disease.