History of

Hygieneby Alois Fellinger

August 20,2014

Etymology• HYGIENE first attested in English in 1677s• hygiene comes from French hygiène, a

latinisation of Greek ὑγιεινή (τέχνη) hugieinē technē (art of health)

Hygieia (Greek Ὑγιεία or Ὑγεία, Latin Hygēa or Hygīa), was the daughter of the god of medicine, Asclepius, and Epione, goddess of soothing.

She was the goddess of health.

Hugieia (ύγιεία: health) was used as a greeting among the Pythagoreans.

Hygiene• Personal hygiene• Respiratory hygiene• Food hygiene• Home hygiene• Laundry hygiene

Recoreded

Begin• Earliest hygiene rules

from around 1500 BC in Hindu text ManusmritiVishnupuran

• Religious rules in Judaism and Islam

In ancient Greece, people cleaned themselves by rubbing a mixture of oil and sand into their skin before scraping it off with a strigil - a long, slightly curved, blunt 'blade' of bronze, copper or bone.

Greek

Romans• Elaborate public bathes• Bathing becomes a

pastime activity• Includes sauna, pools,

massage, barber

Medieval• Bath houses were frowned

upon by the Catholic church• Spreading of diseases due to

“other“ activities there

Mid 1800s• Public bath• Individual bathrooms

Food Hygiene

Ancient Food

Preservation• “Refrigeration” - snow and ice in cold climates or adding saltpeter to water

to lower its temperature

• Dehydration - e.g. sun-drying

• Salting - the first additive used to preserve food

• Cooking - oldest method is open fire. Clay ovens common in China about 200 BC, Japan

wood or coal-fuelled ovens in 3rd century, Europe hearth and chimney by the middle ages

Recognition of

food spoilage• about 500 BC in China

• led to food prohibitions and recommendations to minimize danger of disease,

• don’t eat discoloured, dirty or smelly food

• cook raw foods using high temperatures

• eat hot food

Edible plates• Common in medieval Europe

• “Trenchers”, plates made from very hard bread

• Fed to beggars or dogs after the meal

• Later replaced by wooden or metal trenchers

Hygiene boom in

the 19th

century

• With the industrial revolution, production of food also became increasingly

industrialized in form.

• The development of new processes to make food sustain for longer periods and reduce

germs during production went hand in hand with this industrialization.

• 1850 - John Tyndall developed

Tyndallization for germ reduction in heat-

sensitive foods

• 1855 - Friedrich Küchenmeister discovered

relationship between pork tapeworms in

humans and the parasitic infection

cysticercus cellulosas

• 1860 - Friedrich Albert Zenker proved the

infectiveness of parasitic trichinae

roundworms

• 1864 - Louis Pasteur invented the

Pasteurization process for the preservation

of food

• 1895 - Carl von Linde developed a cooling

process to preserve food.1800‘s

• 1860s: Alexander C. Twining experiments

with commercial refrigerants, refrigerated

train cars transported food

• 1920s: Clarence Birdseye got a patents for

his quick freezing processes, used for fish.

His apparatus of 2 hollow metal plates

cooled to −25° C by vaporization of

ammonia was the precursor to the design

of freezers used today in the food industry.

• 1930s: Powered, domestic refrigerators

began to replace ice boxes and the

necessity for fresh ice every day. Fridges

became popular (50% of US households

having one by 1938, in UK it took till 1968

until 50% of households had one)

Refrigeration

• Household ice boxes mid 1800’s

• 1914, Nathaniel B. Wales, 1st practical electric refrigerator

• 1916 - Alfred Mellowes, self-contained compressor refrigerator

• 1918 - William C. Durant starts the Frigidaire Company, mass-production of refrigerators

• 1922 - Baltzar von Platen and Carl Munters, absorption refrigerator, commercialized by Electrolux

General Electric "Monitor-Top"

refrigerator, 1927

In the late 1920s fresh vegetables were processed through freezing by the PostumCompany (later General Foods), which acquired the technology from Clarence Birdseye

• 1960s, a collaborated effort between the

Pillsbury, NASA, and the U.S. Army

Laboratories

• Objective to provide safe food for space

• NASA had own requirements for Critical

Control Points (CCP) in engineering

• NASA and Pillsbury required contractors to

identify "critical failure areas" and

eliminate them from the system

• A microbiologist, Baumann, advocated for

first adoption of HACCP (at Pillsbury)

• Pillsbury's organized training program for

the FDA in 1969, titled "Food Safety

through the Hazard Analysis and Critical

Control Point System", the first time that

HACCP was used.

HACCP

• HACCP expanded in all areas –

from farm to fork

• Understanding of processes, combined

with appropriate cleaning procedures and

effective control Today

Thank you!