Pus,Sewage,Beer and Milk: Microbiology in Britain,1870–1940

For enzyme theory and biochemistry see: Kohler R. E. , “The enzyme theory and the origin of biochemistry”, Isis, lxiv (1973), 181–96, although he has moderated this line in his more recent work. Kohler also gives the clearest statement on disciplines as institutions and discipline history in his From medical chemistry to biochemistry: The making of a biomedical discipline (Cambridge, 1982). I shall discuss discipline history in much greater depth at the end of this paper; here, I just wish to point out that there are problems with the usual approaches to disciplines.

C. E. Rosenberg has pointed out that bacteriology in the U.S.A. too did not exist until well into the twentieth century. See: “Toward an ecology of knowledge: On discipline, context and history”, in Oleson A. and Voss J. (eds), The organisation of knowledge in modern America, 1860–1920 (Baltimore, 1979), 440–55.

Worboys M. , “The emergence and early development of parasitology”, in Warren K. S. and Bowers J. Z. (eds), Parasitology: A global perspective (New York, 1983), 1–18. Kohler succumbs to this retrospective usage: “I use the term ‘biochemistry’ to refer to the timeless extended family of biochemistries …”, Kohler, op. cit. (ref. 1), 9. Again I shall discuss the implications of this more fully at the end.

Mick Worboys is currently working on the effects of germ theory on various medical traditions in the late nineteenth century. It appears that a substantially similar approach is being taken to American ‘microbe-studies’ by Patricia Gossel. See “Laboratory practice and discipline formation: The case of American bacteriology”, Abstract E1 16 from XVIIIth International Congress of History of Science, 1–9 August 1989.

There is some evidence of increased interest in the non-medical aspects, discussed in this article. Coleman W. in “Koch's Comma Bacillus: The first year”, Bulletin for the history of medicine, lxi (1987), 315–42, noted that there is a need for study of non-medical microbiology. See also Rosenberg, op. cit. (ref. 2).

Geison G. L. , “Pasteur: A sketch in bold strokes”, in Koprowski H. and Plotkin S. A. (eds), World's debt to Pasteur. Proceedings of a Centennial Symposium Commemorating the First Rabies Vaccination Held at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, 17–18 January (New York, 1985), 5–27.

Parascandola J. , “The theoretical basis of Paul Ehrlich's chemotherapy”, Journal for the history of medicine, xxxvi (1981), 19–43.

De Kruif P. , Microbe hunters (London, 1927). Ford W. W. , Bacteriology (New York, 1939). Bulloch W. , The history of bacteriology (New York, 1938). One must also mention Grainger T. H. , Guide to the history of bacteriology (New York, 1958). This book is a superficial guide to journals and other primary material from early in the century.

Foster W. D. , A history of medical bacteriology and immunology (London, 1970).

Foster W. D. , A short history of clinical pathology (Edinburgh, 1961), and Pathology as a profession in Great Britain and the early history of the Royal College of Pathologists (London, 1983).

Collard P. , The development of microbiology (Cambridge, 1976).

Reid R. , Microbes and men (London, 1974).

Lechavalier H. A. and Solotorovsky M. , Three centuries of microbiology (New York, 1974).

This is apparent if one looks at the entries under the appropriate headings in the catalogue of the library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.

Latour B. , The pasteurization of France, translated by Sheridan Alan and Law John (Cambridge, Mass., 1988).

Maulitz R. C. , “Physician versus bacteriologist”, in Vogel M. J. and Rosenberg C. E. (eds), The therapeutic revolution (Philadelphia, 1979), 91–107.

Geison G. L. , Michael Foster and the Cambridge school of physiology (New York, 1978).

French R. D. , Anti-vivisection and medical science (Princeton, 1975). Rupke N. A. , Vivisection in historical perspective (London, 1987).

Geison G. L. , “Divided we stand: Physiologists and clinicians in the American context”, in Vogel and Rosenberg , Therapeutic revolution (ref. 16), 67–90. Shortt S. E. D. , “Physicians, science and status: Issues in the professionalisation of Anglo-American medicine in the nineteenth century”, Medical history, xxvii (1983), 51–68.

Geison , ibid.

Lawrence C. J. , “Incommunicable knowledge: Science, technology, and the clinical art in Britain 1850–1914”, Journal of contemporary history, xx (1985), 503–20. Jacyna L. S. , “The laboratory and the clinic: The impact of pathology on surgical diagnosis in the Glasgow Western Infirmary, 1875–1910”, Bulletin for the history of medicine, lxii (1988), 384–406. On the tension between laboratory and clinical medicine in the U.S.A. see Maulitz , op. cit. (ref. 16).

Worboys M. , (forthcoming), “Vaccine therapy and laboratory medicine in Edwardian Britain”.

Ainsworth G. C. , Introduction to the history of medical mycology (Cambridge, 1987).

Fisher R. B. , Joseph Lister (New York, 1977).

Foster , op. cit. (ref. 9).

Mick Worboys is investigating veterinarians and animal disease in the late nineteenth century.

Bulloch , op. cit. (ref. 8). His obituary of Klein, Journal of pathology, xxviii (1925), 683–97, gives a fuller account. Foster, however is very cool about Klein's achievements.

Wilson G. S. , “The Brown Animal Sanatory Institute”, Journal of hygiene, lxxxii (1979), 503.

For the work of the Local Government Board see: Brand J. L. , Doctors and the state: The British medical profession and government action in public health: 1870–1912 (Baltimore, 1965).

Foster , op. cit. (ref. 9).

Frazer W. M. , A history of English public health: 1834–1939 (London, 1950).

Raymond J. , “Science in the service of medicine: Germ theory, bacteriology and English public health 1860–1914” (circulated paper for the conference on Science in Modern Medicine, U.M.I.S.T., April 1985). Abstract in Bulletin of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, xxxvii (1985), 43–45.

Chick H. Hume M. and MacFarlane M. , War on disease: A history of the Lister Institute (London, 1971).

Ibid.

A collection of obituary notices was complied by his wife in Woodhead H. E. , In memoriam: Sir G. S. Woodhead k.b.e. 1855–1921 (Edinburgh, 1923).

Chick Hume and MacFarlane , op. cit. (ref. 33).

Foster , op. cit. (ref. 10).

Maulitz R. C. , Morbid appearances: The anatomy of pathology in the early nineteenth century (Cambridge, 1987). Foster , op. cit. (ref. 10) and Jacyna , op. cit. (ref. 21).

Frazer , op. cit. (ref. 31).

Lawrence , op. cit. (ref. 21).

Chick Hume and MacFarlane , op. cit. (ref. 33).

Brand , op. cit. (ref. 29). Frazer , op. cit. (ref. 31).

Sanderson M. , The universities and British industry (London, 1972).

Chapman A. W. , The story of a modern university: A history of the University of Sheffield (Oxford, 1955).

Foster , op. cit. (ref. 9).

Boyce's career is being studied as part of a forthcoming Ph.D. thesis by June Jones at U.M.I.S.T. Manchester.

Kohler , op. cit. (ref. 1).

Tropical medicine was the principal forum for the study of another category of microbes — protozoa, which was eventually separated off as protozoology and parasitology. For tropical medicine see: Worboys M. , “The emergence of tropical medicine: A study in the establishment of a scientific speciality”, in Lemaine G. R. MacLeod R. Mulkay M. and Weingart R. (eds), Perspectives on the emergence of scientific disciplines (The Hague, 1976), 75–98. Worboys M. , Science and British colonial imperialism, 1885–1940 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Sussex, 1980). For parasitology see Foster W. D. , A history of parasitology (Edinburgh, 1965), and Worboys , op. cit. (ref. 3). There is a special section on the history of Protozoology in Journal for the history of biology, xxii (1989 summer edition).

Fisher D. , “Rockefeller philanthropy and the British Empire: The creation of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine”, History of education, vii (1978), 129–43.

Chick Hume and MacFarlane , op. cit. (ref. 33).

Graham-Smith G. S. and Keilin D. , “G. H. F. Nuttall, 1862–1937”, Obituary notices of fellows, ii (1936–38), 493–9.

Maulitz , op. cit. (ref. 38). Pathology in Scottish Medical Schools has been considered in a series of biographical/reminiscential sketches by J. Howie. Some 26 of these sketches have appeared so far in the British medical journal throughout 1987 and 1988 under the title “Portraits from memory”. See also Jacyna, op. cit. (ref. 21).

Frazer , op. cit. (ref. 31). Foster , op. cit. (ref. 10).

An account of The Inoculation Department is given in MacFarlane G. , Alexander Fleming: The man and the myth (London, 1984). Keating P. , “Vaccine therapy and the problem of opsonins”, Journal of the history of medicine, xliii (1988), 275–96, provides a useful account of vaccine therapy and its fortunes. Also Worboys, op. cit. (ref. 22).

Foster , op. cit. (ref. 9).

Brand , op. cit. (ref. 29).

Smith F. B. , The retreat of tuberculosis, 1850–1950 (London, 1988). Bryder L. , Below the magic mountain: A social history of tuberculosis in twentieth century Britain (Oxford, 1988).

Kohler R. E. , “The background to Eduard Buchner's discovery of cell-free fermentation”, Journal of the history of biology, iv (1971), 35–61. Kohler argues that immuno-chemistry set the model for medical science at the turn of the century. See also Morgan N. , “Pure science and applied medicine: The relationship between bacteriology and biochemistry in England after 1880”, Bulletin of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, xxxvii (1985), 46–49.

Jones , op. cit. (ref. 46).

Bryder L. , “Tuberculosis and the M.R.C.”, in Austoker J. and Bryder L. (eds), Historical perspectives on the role of the M.R.C. (Oxford, 1989), 1–21.

For a general history of the M.R.C. see Thomson A. Landsborough , Half a century of medical research (2 vols, London, 1975). Also Austoker and Bryder (eds), op. cit. (ref. 60).

Bryder L. , “Public health research and the M.R.C.”, in Austoker and Bryder (eds), op. cit. (ref. 60), 59–81.

Ibid.

Austoker J. and Bryder L. , “The National Institute for Medical Research and related activities of the M.R.C.”, in Austoker and Bryder (eds), op. cit. (ref. 60), 35–57. Creating the institute around the Lister was contemplated but after some consideration the trustees of the Lister decided against the move. Morgan N. , “Note on the Lister Institute and the Medical Research Committee”, Annals of science, xliii (1986), 287–9.

Austoker J. , “Walter Morley Fletcher and the origins of a basic biomedical research policy”, in Austoker and Bryder (eds), op. cit. (ref. 60), 23–33.

Kohler R. E. , “Innovation in normal science: Bacterial physiology”, Isis, lxxvi (1985), 162–81. In this paper, Kohler also provides a chart showing the number of projects on bacterial physiology the M.R.C. tried to set up between 1914 and 1940.

ibid., 171.

Kohler R. E. , “Bacterial physiology: The medical context”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, xxxix (1985), 54–74.

Fisher D. , “The Rockefeller Foundation and the development of scientific medicine in Great Britain”, Minerva, xvi (1978), 20–41. For the Oxford school of pathology see MacFarlane G. , Howard Florey (Oxford, 1979). For the Cambridge school of biochemistry see Kohler R. E. , “Walter Fletcher, F. G. Hopkins, and the Dunn Institute of Biochemistry: A case study in the patronage of science”, Isis, lxix (1978), 331–55.

Fisher , op. cit. (ref. 49).

Information on the development of Departments of Bacteriology in the inter-war period is gleaned primarily from The yearbook of the universities of the Empire (published annually by Herbert Jenkins Ltd, from 1920 by G. B. Bell & Sons Ltd, London).

Hughes S. S. , The virus: A history of the concept (London, 1977). Waterson A. P. and Wilkinson L. , An introduction to the history of virology (Cambridge, 1978).

Bryder , op. cit. (ref. 62). Austoker and Bryder , op. cit. (ref. 64).

Kohler , op. cit. (ref. 66). See: Amsterdamska O. , “Medical and biological constraints: Early research on variation in bacteriology”, Social studies of science, xvii (1987), 657–87. Idem, “The clinical connection: Contexts of research on bacterial variation”, paper given at the Anglo-Dutch conference on history of science, 1987. See also, Kohler op. cit. (refs. 66, 68).

Bulloch , op. cit. (ref. 8).

Collard , op. cit. (ref. 11).

Lechevalier and Solotorovsky , op. cit. (ref. 13).

Bud R. and Roberts G. , Science versus practice: Chemistry in Victorian Britain (Manchester, 1984). Russell C. A. , with Coley N. G. and Roberts G. K. , Chemists by profession: The origins and rise of The Royal Institute of Chemistry (Milton Keynes, 1977).

Luckin W. , Pollution and control: A social history of the Thames in the nineteenth century (Bristol, 1986). Hamlin C. S. , What becomes of pollution? Adversary science and the controversy on the self-purification of rivers in Britain, 1850–1900 (Ph.D. thesis, University of Madison Wisconsin, 1982).

Hamlin , op. cit. (ref. 79).

Hamlin C. , “William Dibdin and the idea of biological sewage treatment”, Technology and culture, xxix (1988), 189–218. Idem, “Politics and germ theories in Victorian Britain: The Metropolitan Water Commissioners of 1867–9”, in MacLeod R. (ed.), Government and expertise (Cambridge, 1988), 110–27.

Russell C. A. , “Percy Frankland: The iron gate of examination”, Chemistry in Britain, xiii (1977), 425–7.

Hamlin , op. cit. (ref. 79).

Rosen G. , A history of public health (New York, 1958).

Unnamed chapter in M.Sc. Dissertation U.M.I.S.T., in library C.H.S.T.M.

See the Reports of the Society of Chemical Industry, 1917–30.

Holter H. and Møller K. M. , The Carlsberg Laboratory, 1876–1976 (Copenhagen, 1976).

Sigsworth E. M. , “Science and the brewing industry, 1850–1900”, Economic history review, xvii (1965), 536–50.

Teich M. , “Fermentation theory and practice: The beginnings of pure yeast culture and English brewing, 1883–1913”, History of technology, viii (1983), 117–33.

Morgan N. D. , The development of biochemistry in England through botany and the brewing industry: 1840–1890 (Ph.D. thesis, London (U.C.L.), 1981), and “The development of biochemistry in England through botany and the brewing industry (1870–1890)”, History and philosophy of the life sciences, ii (1980), 141–66.

Ibid.

H. E. A., “A. Brown, 1852–1919”, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B, xcix (1922).

Yearbook (ref. 71), 1929 and 1932.

Kohler , op. cit. (ref. 58), and Kohler R. E. , “The reception of Eduard Buchner's discovery of cell-free fermentation”, Journal of the history of biology, v (1972), 327–53.

Kohler R. E. , “The background to A. Harden's discovery of co-enzymes”, Bulletin for the history of medicine, xlviii (1974), 22–40.

E.g. Weisgal M. W. and Carmichael J. , Chaim Weizmann: A biography by several hands (London, 1962). Rose N. , Chaim Weizmann: A biography (London, 1986).

Rheinharz J. , “Science in the service of politics: The case of Chaim Weizmann during the first world war”, English historical review, 1985, 572–603. Idem, Chaim Weizmann: The making of a Zionist leader (Oxford, 1985).

Waksman S. A. , “Chaim Weizmann as a bacteriologist”, in Weisgal and Carmichael, op. cit. (ref. 96), 107–13.

ibid., 600.

D.S.I.R. report of the Chemistry Research Board for the period ended 31st December 1934. With historical introduction and report by the Director of Chemical Research (London, 1935). I am currently preparing a paper on the creation of the Department of Microbiology at Teddington.

Bird W. H. , A history of the Institute of Brewing (London, 1955). For a general survey of the fermentation industries in Britain see: Hastings J. J. H. , “Development of the fermentation industries in Great Britain”, Advances in applied microbiology, xiv (1971), 1–45.

Walker T. K. , “History of the development of a School of Biochemistry in the Faculty of Technology, University of Manchester”, Advances in applied microbiology, xii (1970), 1–10.

A glance at The journal of the Society of Chemical Industry and the D.S.I.R. reports for the 1920s and '30s will show the importance of chemists in the food processing industries.

Melville Harry Sir , The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (London, 1962).

See the books by MacFarlane, op. cit. (refs 54 and 69). There seems to be a tendency for authors to support one or other of the protagonists, usually their mentor, e.g. Hare ( Hare R. , The birth of penicillin and the disarming of the microbes (London, 1970)) favours Fleming; the recent book by Williams T. I. ( Howard Florey: Penicillin and after (Oxford, 1984)), Florey. See also: Liebenau J. , “The British success with penicillin”, Bulletin of the Society for the Social History of Medicine, xxxvii (1985), 82–85. Sheehan J. C. , The enchanted ring: The untold story of penicillin (Cambridge, Mass., 1982).

But see Waksman S. A. , My life with the microbes (London, 1958).

Hamlin , op. cit. (ref. 79). Eyler J. M. , “The conversion of Angus Smith: The changing role of chemistry and biology in sanitary science, 1850–1880)”, Bulletin of the history of medicine, liv (1980), 216–34.

Personal communication from Gale E. F. Profs and Pollock M. J. , 1989. Amsterdamska has discussed the lack of a biological context for microbe-studies in Britain until the 1940s, largely through the dominance of medical interests, op. cit. (ref. 74).

Russell E. J. , A history of agricultural science in Great Britain (London, 1966).

Russell E. J. , British agricultural research: Rothamsted (London, 1942).

Russell , op. cit. (ref. 109). Holmes C. J. , “Science and the farmer: The development of the Agricultural Advisory Service in England and Wales: 1900–1939”, Agricultural history review, xxxvi (1988), 77–86. Olby R. , “Social imperialism and support for science and agriculture in Edwardian Britain” (seminar paper at C.H.S.T.M., 6 June 1989).

Russell , op. cit. (ref. 110).

Aulie R. P. , Boussingault and the nitrogen cycle (Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1968).

Holmes , op. cit. (ref. 111).

Shimmin A. N. , The University of Leeds: The first half-century (Cambridge, 1954).

Yearbook (ref. 71); Holmes , op. cit. (ref. 111).

Russell , op. cit. (ref. 109).

Smith , op. cit. (ref. 57).

Burgess H. F. , The National Institute for Research in Dairying: A memoir (Reading, 1962).

Ainsworth G. C. , Introduction to the history of mycology (Cambridge, 1976). Idem, Introduction to the history of plant pathology (Cambridge, 1981).

Thomason B. , The new botany in Britain: C.1870–c.1914 (Ph.D. thesis, U.M.I.S.T., 1987).

F.S.B., “H. M. Ward, 1854–1906”, Dictionary of national biography, second supplement, iii (1912), 589–91.

Thomason , op. cit. (ref. 121).

Yearbook, (ref. 71).

Hall A. R. , Science for industry: A short history of the Imperial College of Science and Technology and its antecedents (London, 1982).

ibid., 42.

Charlton H. B. , Portrait of a University, 1851–1951 (Manchester, 1951).

Brockway L. H. , Science and colonial expansion: The role of the British Royal Botanical Gardens (New York, 1979).

Ainsworth G. C. , “Commonwealth Mycological Institute, 1920–1980”, Review of plant pathology, lix (1980), 249–55.

E.g. Edge D. O. and Mulkay M. J. , “Case studies of scientific specialities” (circulated paper, 1974).

Geison G. L. , “Scientific change, emerging specialties, and research schools”, History of science, xix (1981), 20–40.

Lemaine G. R. , op. cit. (ref. 48). Geison , op. cit. (ref. 131). Rosenberg , op. cit. (ref. 2).

Kohler , op. cit. (ref. 1).

He writes: “I use the term ‘biochemistry’ to refer to the timeless extended family of biochemistries …”, Kohler, op. cit. (ref. 1), 9. This confirms that his referent is a modern conception of what biochemistry is, merely mapped onto those occasions in the past when something we would now recognise as biochemistry was being done.

Rosenberg , op. cit. (ref. 2), 444.

Geison , op. cit. (ref. 131).

Kohler , op. cit. (ref. 69).

Thomason , op. cit. (ref. 121).

Worboys , op. cit. (ref. 3). Although taking up the ‘pre-history’, ‘emergence’, ‘establishment’ progression, this account emphasises the political machinations which made different opportunities for discipline formation possible. He shows how technical and theoretical resources are used by different workers acting within existing fields.