Would disseminating germ theory really help all that much? Rome itself might have been a fairly literate society, but in the time it would take to overcome all the inferential distances in just the educated classes, the drug would have spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe and the Near East by merchants hoping to make a quick sesterce from selling the “miracle cure” to the peasantry.
The Romans already believed something very similar to germ theory: that diseases were caused by an invisible contagion that was passed through contact/exposure to those already infested by it.
Also, I would be the primary distributor and manufacturer of pennicillin; so I could have some control over how it was distributed. Ensuring it got into the hands first of medics trained in my courses—I.e.; people who knew about germ theory—would be trivial.
Would disseminating germ theory really help all that much? Rome itself might have been a fairly literate society, but in the time it would take to overcome all the inferential distances in just the educated classes, the drug would have spread like wildfire through the rest of Europe and the Near East by merchants hoping to make a quick sesterce from selling the “miracle cure” to the peasantry.
The Romans already believed something very similar to germ theory: that diseases were caused by an invisible contagion that was passed through contact/exposure to those already infested by it.
Also, I would be the primary distributor and manufacturer of pennicillin; so I could have some control over how it was distributed. Ensuring it got into the hands first of medics trained in my courses—I.e.; people who knew about germ theory—would be trivial.
Plus, I’d have decades to resolve the issue.