was generally accepted. This was not a matter of course, as the cholera outbreaks in Hamburg in the 19th century show. In general, Hamburg was not a role model in terms of health management at the time: ’The last major cholera epidemic in Europe took place in Hamburg,’ says Prof Dr Philipp Osten. One reason for this was that people in the Hanseatic city still favoured the idea that cholera was caused by vapours from the soil and not by contaminated drinking water. According to Prof Dr Philipp Osten, this only changed in 1894 when the Imperial Health Office published a map of cholera deaths in and around Hamburg - and the result was striking: the number of deaths changed dramatically at the city limits. At that time, drinking water in Hamburg still came directly from the river Elbe. In Altona, people were already drinking water filtered through sand. From then on, the idea of pathogens - the germ theory - was established. With consequences: Fear of bacteria spread. The age of disinfection therefore also began with the ’germ’. ’The fear of epidemics is now turning into an economic advantage,’ said Prof Dr Philipp Osten. It became a competitive advantage for a port city to be able to offer a ’safe harbour’ that was not a gateway for new pathogens. In the 1890s, the first factories for disinfectants were therefore built primarily in port cities. In Hamburg, for example, the Bacillol factory Sanders was founded in 1897 and became the ’Bacillolfabrik Dr. Bode & Co.’ in 1924. The new era of harbour hygiene was illustrated by a photo from that time presented by Prof Dr Philipp Osten: it shows the ’the guarding of a ship‘s cargo suspected of being infected with the plague by dogs as sharp as rats’. 1OO YEARS BODE CHEMIE 9
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