"Will you have some microbe? ... The Microbe alone is true, and Pasteur is its prophet."
French journalist mocking Pasteur in 1881
In the 1870s, French microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822-95) was still trying to disprove criticism of his germ theory. He had reported that boiled fluids, such as broth and urine, do not support bacterial growth if kept free of contamination. The British physician Harry Bastian, an outspoken critic, countered that boiled urine could indeed grow bacteria. Pasteur realized that to prove his germ theory, he needed to achieve temperatures greater than 212°F (100°C) and charged French microbiologist Charles Chamberland (1851- 1908) with creating such a device.
Chamberland knew that if water were boiled under pressure, it could reach 250°F (121°C). Fifteen minutes at this temperature killed all known bacteria. He devised an autoclave, or "self lock," in 1879, for sterilizing surgical instruments. Chamberland's device was based on the 1679 "steam digester" of Denis Papin—the first pressure cooker.
Both the autoclave and the pressure cooker remain in use today. Sadly, the autoclave does not protect against the food-borne pathogen leading to "mad cow disease" or the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease because prions, the causative agent, can survive ordinary autoclaving temperatures.
