To: maceng2 who wrote (1509358 ) 12/22/2024 9:40:42 AM From: koan Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1574714 Yes, Rome made advancements of our civilization, but that was just one step in a thousand mile journey to todays civilization. My favorite book of all time is:" The Axe Makers Gift". It tells the story of the evolution of civilization over the last several hundred thousand years. Starting with the progress in tool making. E.g. why Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization, why the ancient Greeks were the first culture to think in modern terms such as Democracy and Ethics, and Plato's existential story "The Allegory of the Cave" in his book:" The Republic". It was because they had the first functional written language. 10% of Athens was literate. If Rome had not destroyed ancient Greece IMO, we would be a thousand years ahead of where we are now. The evolution of civilization took another big jump with Gutenbergs invention of the printing press in 1437, and on and on. And finally Louis pasteur who discovered why sanitation was so important.Louis Pasteur ForMemRS ( /'lu?i pæ'st??r/ , French: [lwi pastœ?] ? ; 27 December 1822 – 28 September 1895) was a French chemist , pharmacist , and microbiologist renowned for his discoveries of the principles of vaccination , microbial fermentation , and pasteurization , the last of which was named after him. His research in chemistry led to remarkable breakthroughs in the understanding of the causes and preventions of diseases , which laid down the foundations of hygiene, public health and much of modern medicine. [3] Pasteur's works are credited with saving millions of lives through the developments of vaccines for rabies and anthrax . He is regarded as one of the founders of modern bacteriology and has been honored as the "father of bacteriology" [4] and the "father of microbiology " [5] [6] (together with Robert Koch ; [7] [8] the latter epithet also attributed to Antonie van Leeuwenhoek ). [9] Pasteur was responsible for disproving the doctrine of spontaneous generation . Under the auspices of the French Academy of Sciences , his experiment demonstrated that in sterilized and sealed flasks, nothing ever developed; conversely, in sterilized but open flasks, microorganisms could grow. [10] For this experiment, the academy awarded him the Alhumbert Prize carrying 2,500 francs in 1862. Pasteur is also regarded as one of the fathers of germ theory of diseases , which was a minor medical concept at the time. [11] His many experiments showed that diseases could be prevented by killing or stopping germs, thereby directly supporting the germ theory and its application in clinical medicine. He is best known to the general public for his invention of the technique of treating milk and wine to stop bacterial contamination, a process now called pasteurization. Pasteur also made significant discoveries in chemistry, most notably on the molecular basis for the asymmetry of certain crystals and racemization . Early in his career, his investigation of sodium ammonium tartrate initiate