On the Application of the Mass Law to the Process of Disinfection—being a Contribution to the “Mechanistic Theory” as opposed to the “Vitalistic Theory ”

Inactivation of Escherichia coli cells with sonication, manosonication, thermosonication, and manothermosonication: Microbial responses and kinetics modeling

“…There exist two postulations, namely vitalistic and mechanistic conceptions, contemplating the response of an organism population to an inactivation treatment (Lee and Gilbert, 1918). The vitalistic approach assumes that individuals in a population possess different resistance to a lethal agent (Cerf, 1977).…”

“…From the vitalistic conception, cells sensitive to ultrasound treatment might be destroyed rapidly or in a short period after being exposed to a lethal agent while those resistant to ultrasound might be destroyed slowly leading to a tailing-off on the survival curves. Alternatively, mechanistic conception assumes that lethal events take place in a random manner for cells with similar resistance (Lee and Gilbert, 1918). A direct application of the mechanistic concept thus leads to first-order inactivation kinetic models.…”

The Significance of the Variation in Shape of Time-Survivor Curves

“…This has been done by halving the difference between the logarithm of the time when 84% of the organisms are viable and that when 16% are viable. The reciprocal Lee & Gilbert (1918 , Table IV) Lee & Gilbert (1918) Chick (1910 258) Chick (1910, p. 260) Chick (1908a, p. 97) Witheil (this paper, Part II) Lea, Haines & Coulson (1937) Brooks (1918 Smith-Henderson (1921) Falk & Winslow (1926) Wyckoff (1932) Wyckoff & Rivers (1930 Wyckoff Witheil (this paper, Part II) Hewlett (1909) Oothuisen ( logarithms of the survivor times are often more normally distributed than the survivor times themselves. The significance of this fact is discussed in the next section.…”

“…Many observers have based their theories of disinfection on the shape of the time-survivor curves they have obtained. When the logarithm of the survivors plotted against time gave a straight line, mechanistic theories have been generally applied (Chick, 1908a(Chick, , 1910 Rahn, 1929Rahn, , 1930Lee & Gilbert, 1918). …”

Kinetics of apparent cell death in yeasts induced by ethanol

“…In addition, an Arrhenius temperature dependence of the kinetics of cell death has been demonstrated for temperatures above those at which the cells were grown, both in the presence and absence of these chemical agents (Lee and Gilbert, 1918). This is based on the theory of absolute reaction rates (Johnson et al 1954).…”