How beer helped change the history of modern surgery

"It might sound like an exaggeration, but it's not: beer played an indirect but crucial role in the birth of modern surgery. Not because it held the key to cures, nor because anyone drank it in an operating room, but because it was one of the first products in which science observed something previously invisible. That something germs would forever change how we understand fermentation, food and also human infections."

"When beer got sick In the mid-19th century, beer and wine frequently spoiled. It changed flavor, turned sour, and became cloudy. For brewers, it was a practical problem; for science, a mystery. Why did one beer turn out well while another, made with the same ingredients and processes, was ruined? This is where Louis Pasteur comes in. His interest in fermentation wasn't gastronomic, but scientific: to understand why it failed."

"fermentation wasn't a spontaneous phenomenon, but a biological process caused by living microorganisms, and other, different microorganisms were responsible for the beer going bad. This discovery not only solved a technical problem for the brewing industry. It also played a decisive role in disproving the then-prevalent theory of spontaneous generation, which held that life and by extension infections arose naturally from decaying matter."

Beer and wine frequently spoiled in the mid-19th century, changing flavor, turning sour, and becoming cloudy. Brewers experienced inconsistent results despite identical ingredients and processes, creating both economic problems and scientific puzzles. Louis Pasteur examined samples under a microscope and showed that fermentation is driven by living microorganisms and that different microbes cause spoilage. That discovery solved brewing issues and challenged spontaneous generation by linking microbes to decay. The microbial insight into fermentation prompted the crucial question of whether microbes could also cause disease in humans, shifting medical thinking toward germ-based explanations.

Read at english.elpais.com