Study for the PMLS History of Medical Technology Test. Explore flashcards and multiple choice questions, each question is accompanied by hints and explanations. Get prepared for your exam!

Multiple Choice

Pasteur’s vaccine work in the 1880s included vaccines against which diseases?

Pasteur showed that immunity could be induced by using weakened forms of a pathogen, applying this idea to both livestock and humans in the 1880s. He first succeeded with an anthrax vaccine, using an attenuated Bacillus anthracis strain to protect animals from infection. Building on that success, he then developed a rabies vaccine by progressively weakening the rabies virus—ultimately enabling it to be used to protect a person after exposure. These two diseases, anthrax and rabies, are the ones Pasteur is best known for vaccinating in that era. Other options don’t fit the specific work and timeline: the smallpox vaccine existed long before Pasteur, and while he did work on cholera in birds, it wasn’t a human vaccine in the 1880s; tetanus, diphtheria, and malaria vaccines were developed later or by others.

Pasteur showed that immunity could be induced by using weakened forms of a pathogen, applying this idea to both livestock and humans in the 1880s. He first succeeded with an anthrax vaccine, using an attenuated Bacillus anthracis strain to protect animals from infection. Building on that success, he then developed a rabies vaccine by progressively weakening the rabies virus—ultimately enabling it to be used to protect a person after exposure. These two diseases, anthrax and rabies, are the ones Pasteur is best known for vaccinating in that era. Other options don’t fit the specific work and timeline: the smallpox vaccine existed long before Pasteur, and while he did work on cholera in birds, it wasn’t a human vaccine in the 1880s; tetanus, diphtheria, and malaria vaccines were developed later or by others.