Maggot therapy is a method that has been used for hundreds of years and perhaps thousands. It is a successful procedure that has been used continuously for so long. It is believed that the Mayan civilization used maggots to heal wounds. Progress has been made in the process, which occurs constantly in medical practices. Therefore, it is expected to only improve. Maggot therapy is the application of live blowfly larvae, or maggots, to the wound to treat soft tissue wounds. While it may seem incredible, it has had a very high success rate over the years. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The history of maggot therapy is long. The Old Testament is the oldest written testimony confirming the infestation of a wound by fly larvae on a man. “My body is covered with worms and scabs, my skin is broken and rotten…” The Holy Bible, Old Testament, Job 7:5. In history, ancient tribes from South Wales, Burma and Central America have also been seen to use this method. This goes back to the last thousand years. In 1500, the French surgeon Ambroise Pare was the first doctor to notice the benefits of maggot therapy. However, in his early methods, he tried to control worms due to their destructive behavior. This would avoid an infestation. He would later discover that an infestation needed to occur for success to occur. The first official publication of the method was performed by John Forney Zacharias during the American Civil War in 1800. He documented how well maggots removed dead tissue in wounds. There was also a Northern States Army surgeon, William Williams Keen, who reported the presence of fly larvae in the wounds which appeared to have no ill effect despite being a disgusting sight. During this period, the popular belief among scientists was that maggots introduced bacteria to wound sites, causing infections. In the 19th century, the germ theory of microbiologists Robert Koch and Louis Pasteur ended the availability and trust needed for doctors. use contaminated living matter on an open wound. At the end of the 19th century, very few doctors used worm therapy. This had a drastic effect during World War I, when the mortality rate from open wounds increased to seventy percent. However, in 1917, a French military surgeon named William Baer reported the results of using maggot therapy. Then he began an experiment with twenty-one patients who had previously failed primary treatments for osteomyelitis. Osteomyelitis is an infection of the bone. In this experiment, he exposed the affected areas to maggots and found that after two months the wounds of all the patients had completely healed. This has led to maggot therapy becoming the fastest and most successful form of treatment specifically for osteomyelitis. Baer also discovered that it was crucial to use sterile larvae because otherwise a Clostridium tetani infection would occur. He would then work with colleagues to create special worms to use for the therapy. They developed several ways to sterilize eggs. After Michael Baer's death, worm therapy experienced a surge in popularity, even though a large number of his colleagues disliked the method. Within ten years, starting in 1930, more than three hundred hospitals in the United States introduced the use of worms in their procedures and more than one hundred publications were made. Not long after the increase in the use of maggot therapy occurred.