Virology

The Virology (from the Latin virus = poison and ancient Greek λόγος logos = customer, teaching) is the study of the virus. The virology characterized and classified the viruses described so far. She explores their properties and propagation as well as the prevention and treatment of viral infections. Every living organism (including bacteria and protozoa ) can be infected by viruses. The virology of human and animal pathogenic viruses moves like microbiology at the interface between biology and medicine. Plant pathogens, viruses have great importance in the agricultural industry and agriculture.

History

The term 'virus' was first used by Aulus Cornelius Celsus in the first century before Christ. He described the saliva, was transmitted through the rabies, as, toxic '.

1883 was first detected by the German Adolf Mayer in the Netherlands that a disease can be triggered by a substance that could not be removed by filtration, and thus had to be much smaller than bacteria. Under the light microscope were namely no bacteria visible, but very fine crystalline needles. Only in the years around 1940 with the development of the electron microscope, these hypotheses have been confirmed and the Virology researched.

Dmitry Ivanovsky transferred the mosaic disease in tobacco plants by ultrafiltered extract and thus had the tobacco mosaic virus described later after. The first evidence of an animal virus succeeded in 1898 Friedrich Loeffler and Paul Frosch, who discovered the foot- and - mouth disease virus.

The first primitive form of vaccination against viruses has been practiced in India and China since the 11th century. There was the scabs of the sores of smallpox patients who had survived the disease, introduced in small scratches or other wounds from healthy individuals. The method is now known as variolation. Later it was also used in Asia Minor, and of Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire observed that brought the process in 1721 to England. The risk of dying from variolation, was 1 to 2 percent. Compared to the mortality resulting from normal smallpox infection from 25% to over 40% in young children, this was a step forward. Since about 1770 can be shown that six people had been vaccinated successfully in Germany and England with Kuhpockenlymphe, as well as 1796 Edward Jenner used cowpox material to vaccinate the eight -year-old James Phipps against smallpox. Thus, the mortality risk could be further reduced. Louis Pasteur called this procedure in 1881 in honor of Jenner, vaccination ' ( engl. vaccination from the Latin vacca = cow).