<P> Later, researchers discovered that this public well had been dug only three feet from an old cesspit, which had begun to leak fecal bacteria . The diapers of a baby, who had contracted cholera from another source, had been washed into this cesspit . Its opening was originally under a nearby house, which had been rebuilt farther away after a fire . The city had widened the street and the cesspit was lost . It was common at the time to have a cesspit under most homes . Most families tried to have their raw sewage collected and dumped in the Thames to prevent their cesspit from filling faster than the sewage could decompose into the soil . </P> <P> After the cholera epidemic had subsided, government officials replaced the handle on the Broad Street pump . They had responded only to the urgent threat posed to the population, and afterward they rejected Snow's theory . To accept his proposal would have meant accepting the fecal - oral method transmission of disease, which they dismissed . </P> <P> The more formal experiments on the relationship between germ and disease were conducted by Louis Pasteur between the year 1860 and 1864 . He discovered the pathology of the puerperal fever and the pyogenic vibrio in the blood, and suggested using boric acid to kill these microorganisms before and after confinement . </P> <P> Pasteur further demonstrated between 1860 and 1864 that fermentation and the growth of microorganisms in nutrient broths did not proceed by spontaneous generation . He exposed freshly boiled broth to air in vessels that contained a filter to stop all particles passing through to the growth medium, and even with no filter at all, with air being admitted via a long tortuous tube that would not pass dust particles . Nothing grew in the broths: therefore the living organisms that grew in such broths came from outside, as spores on dust, rather than being generated within the broth . </P>

This individual established a link between microbes and disease