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/dʒərm θˈɪri/ Listen

noun

Germ theory n.

(Biol.) The theory that living organisms can be produced only by the development of living germs. Cf. Biogenesis, Abiogenesis.

(Med.) The theory which attributes contagious and infectious diseases, suppurative lesions, etc., to the agency of germs, i.e. pathogenic microorganisms. The science of bacteriology was developed after this theory had been established.

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Etymology of 'Germ theory'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Germ theory" Quotes from Famous Books

... an army, whose numbers are legion, who worry about their health and that of the members of their family. What with the doctors scaring the life out of them with the germ theory, seeking to obtain legislation to vaccinate them, examine their children nude in school, take out their tonsils, appendices, and other internal organs, inject serums into them for this, that, and the other, and requiring them to observe a score and one maxims ...

— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... electrochemical civilization developed and they began working with nuclear energy and developed reaction-drive spaceships. But they'd concentrated so on the inorganic sciences, and so far neglected the bio-sciences, that when they launched their first ship for Venus they hadn't yet developed a germ theory of disease." ...

— Time Crime • H. Beam Piper

... numbers are legion, who worry about their health and that of the members of their family. What with the doctors scaring the life out of them with the germ theory, seeking to obtain legislation to vaccinate them, examine their children nude in school, take out their tonsils, appendices, and other internal organs, inject serums into them for this, that, and the other, and requiring them to observe a score and one maxims which they do ...

— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... has occurred in practical surgery since the discovery of the relation of micro-organisms to the complications occurring in wounds has caused me to select this subject for discussion. Although many of my hearers are familiar with the germ theory of disease, it is possible that it may interest some of them to have put before them in a short address a few points in bacteriology which are of value ...

— Scientific American Supplement, No. 810, July 11, 1891 • Various

... GERM THEORY, the doctrine that certain diseases are due to fermentation caused by the presence of germs in the system in the form of minute ...

— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood