Bacteria, Their Relation to Modern Medicine, the Arts and Industries

It has been customary for the president in making his retiring address, to choose some popular subject and discuss it on broad lines. In some cases my predecessors have given a resume of the scientific literature in our own State, and I need not say that we all feel proud of the work accomplished by this small band of workers. I shall venture, in this address, to discuss the subject of Bacteria along general lines and hope I may be able to correct some popular misapprehensions concerning the subject

Microbe Hunters

Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif was first published in 1926 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York. It dramatically recounts the breakthrough discoveries of the fundamental elements of bacteriology. It features exciting profiles of Antony Leeuwenhoek, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, Émile Roux, Emil Behring, Élie Metchnikoff, Theobald Smith, David Bruce, Ronald Ross, Battista Grassi, Walter Reed, and Paul Ehrlich. Their development of germ theory and its scientific proofs led to the first effective treatments for human diseases like anthrax, rabies, diptheria, malaria, sleeping sickness, syphilis, and yellow fever. They also made discoveries that saved the dairy, wine, beer, silk, and cattle industries. These determined experimenters proved time and again that tiny living beings only seen by microscope can have huge impacts on human life, and they emphatically demonstrated the value of science for modern civilization. A best seller in its time, the work is an enduring classic that has inspired many scientific careers. Paul de Kruif (1890–1971) was an American microbiologist and World War I veteran who turned to writing after his dismissal from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research because of his controversial opinions on current medical practice published in a book of essays. Among his other works, he also assisted Sinclair Lewis with the background of science for the novel Arrowsmith (1925). doi: 10.32873/unl.dc.zea.1503https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/zeabook/1147/thumbnail.jp

La transformación de la peste : el laboratorio y la identidad de las enfermedades infecciosas

Las enfermedades infecciosas pueden ser, y son, identificadas de muchas maneras: a partir de su presentación clínica (signos, síntomas, datos de autopsia), mediante criterios epidemiológicos (modo y formas de difusión), a través de técnicas de laboratorio que aíslan el agente causal. En este artículo afirmó que la práctica de identificar enfermedades infecciosas mediante el laboratorio y sus procedimientos confiere a estas enfermedades identidades diferentes de las que poseen por el empleo de otros procedimientos. El laboratorio otorga a las enfermedades infecciosas identidades en las que el agente causal es la parte esencial y fundamental. Históricamente, por lo tanto, cuando se descubrió por medio de técnicas de laboratorio el "agente causal" de cada enfermedad infecciosa, se transformó la identidad de esta enfermedad. Muestro cómo sucedió esto en el caso de la peste, cuando Kitasato y Yersin dieron a esta enfermedad su identidad de laboratorio en Hong Kong en 1894. También sostengo que, debido a esta transformación de la identidad de las enfermedades infecciosas por el laboratorio, no nos es posible a los historiadores de la medicina comparar la peste pre-laboratorio con la peste moderna, o asumir que la identidad de la peste post-laboratorio puede aplicarse a la peste prelaboratorio

Intercepting infection: Quarantine, the Port Sanitary Authority and immigration in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Britain

This thesis is an investigation into infectious disease prevention in British ports in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the introduction of medical restrictions to immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century. It examines the processes which led from the imposition of human quarantine toward the implementation of sanitary inspection at British ports. Central to this development was the influence of international pressures and demands and their incorporation into British domestic port policy. These pressures and demands resulted from the differing systems of prophylaxis and related medical theories favoured by other European imperial powers. They were discussed at the numerous International Sanitary Conferences of the nineteenth century and related particularly to shipping and commerce. British use of quarantine for the prevention of the 'exotic' diseases, cholera, yellow fever, and plague was brought to an end with the repeal of the Quarantine Act in 1896. However, exclusionary methods were not banished from the ports but remained in place for the prevention of diseases introduced by foreign migrants. The prevention of disease among immigrants, as a distinct process in port health, increased during and after the cholera epidemic of 1892, and was largely a reaction to American port health measures. Immigration restriction appeared to contradict the general opposition to exclusionary prophylaxis at British ports. However, the fundamental difference between the exclusion of immigrants who were regarded as a potential health risk and the temporary exclusion of a vessel through quarantine, was that the detention of an immigrant vessel, and exclusion of immigrants, was not disruptive to trade

(The) house fly a carrier of disease.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University This item was digitized by the Internet Archive