Evolution of microbiology as seen in the textbooks of Edwin O. Jordan and William H. Park

Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine

Volumn 72, Issue 5, 2000, Pages 321-328

  Strick, James ^a,b  

^a ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; BACTERIAL GROWTH; BACTERIOLOGY; BACTERIUM ISOLATION; CLINICAL LABORATORY; ECOLOGY; ENVIRONMENTAL FACTOR; NONHUMAN; ORGANIZATION; SCIENCE;

COMPARATIVE STUDY; HISTORY OF MEDICINE, 20TH CENT.; MICROBIOLOGY; PORTRAITS; TEXTBOOKS; UNITED STATES;

EID: 0033775203     PISSN: 00440086     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (33)

1. Clark, P.F. Pioneer Microbiologists of America. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press; 1961, pp. 160-165.
2. Clark, P.F. Pioneer Microbiologists of America Ibid., pp. 255-261.
3. Oliver, WAV. The Man Who Lived for Tomorrow: a Biography of William H. Park. New York: Button; 1941, p. 176.
4. Oliver, WAV. The Man Who Lived for Tomorrow: a Biography of William H. Ibid., p. 467.
5. Burrows, W. Obituary of Edwin Oakes Jordan. Nat. Acad. Sci. Biogr. Mem. 20:197-228, 1939.
6. Dubos, R. Pasteur's dilemma: the road not taken. ASM News 40:703-709, 1974;
7. Pasteur and Modem Science. Washington, DC: ASM Press, 1998, esp. pp. xvi-xviii.
8. Burrows, W., Pasteur and Modem Science op cit., p. 208.
9. John Tyndall, the British physicist who made pioneering contributions in microbiology such as the 1877 discovery of fractional sterilization, nonetheless had one of the most extreme views of this kind. See Strick, J. Sparks of Life: Danvinism and the Victorian Spontaneous Generation Debates. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, forthcoming, esp. Chapters 6 and 7.
10. Park, W.H. and Williams, A. Pathogenic Micro-organisms Including Bacteria and Protozoa. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger; 1908 (3rd ed.), Chapter 22, pp. 283ff.
11. Paul, D. Controlling Human Heredity. Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press; 1995, pp. 68-69.
12. Jordan, E.O. A Textbook of General Bacteriology. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders; 1908, pp. 111-112.
13. For an excellent discussion of the battle between Koch and Nägeli, see Mazumdar, P. Species and Specificity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1995.
14. Brock, T.D. Milestones in Microbiology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall; 1961, pp. 100-101.
15. One of the first to make this observation explicitly was Smith, T. Koch's views on the stability of species among bacteria. Ann. Med. Hist. 4:524-530, 1932.
16. Another was Polish bacteriologist Ludwik Fleck in 1935. See the English translation of his work The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, by Bradley, F. and Trenn, T.J. Chicago: University of Chicago Press-,1979, pp. 29-30. Fleck points out that the epistemological barriers to seeing the phenomena of asymptomatic carriers and bacterial variability were related and were both reinforced by the long shadow of Robert Koch.
17. Olga Amsterdamska has made a very illuminating study of the reasons why the "pleomorphist" position could be revived in the 1920s-1940s in Stabilizing instability: the controversy over cyclogenic theories of bacterial variation during the interwar period. J. Hist. Biol. 24:191-222, 1991.
18. See also Summers, W. From culture as organism to organism as cell: historical origins of bacterial genetics. J. Hist. Biol. 24:171-190,1991.
19. Jordan, E.O. Variation in bacteria. Read before National Academy of Sciences 9 Dec. 1914, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 1:160-164, 1915.
20. Jordan, E.O. Textbook, op cit., (first ed.), p. 104.
21. Park, W.H. assisted by Guerard, A.R. Bacteriology in Medicine and Surgery. New York: Lea Brothers; 1899, pp. 257-262.
22. Park, W.H. and Williams, A., assisted by Krumwiede, C. Pathogenic Microorganisms, 7th ed. New York: Lea and Febiger, 1917, p. 25.
23. Park, W.H. and Williams, A. Pathogenic Microorganisms, llth ed. Philadelphia: Lea and Febiger; 1939, Chapter 4, pp. 73-108.
24. See Braun, W. Bacterial dissociation: a critical review of the phenomenon of bacterial variation. Bacteriol. Rev. 11: 75-114, 1947.
25. On Kendall's interest, see Coulter, C. Divided Legacy: Twentieth Century Medicine and the Bacteriological Era. Berkeley: North Atlantic; 1994, pp. 192-193.
26. Interesting and suggestive revivals of pleomorphist ideas still occur: see e.g., Domingue, G. Electron dense cytoplasmic particles and chronic infection: a bacterial pleomorphy hypothesis. Endocytobiosis and Cell Res. 11:19-40, 1995;
27. also Wainwright, M. Extreme pleomorphism and the bacterial life cycle: a forgotten controversy. Persp. Biol. Med. 40:407-414, 1997.
28. Oliver, W., Persp. Biol. Med. op cit., p. 176.
29. Oliver, W., Persp. Biol. Med. Ibid, p. 272.
30. Park, 1st ed., Oliver, W., Persp. Biol. Med. op cit., p. 299.
31. Brock, T.D. Roben Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology. Washington: ASM Press; 1999, pp. 278-79.
32. Oliver, W.W., Roben Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology op cit., pp. 456-57.
33. See Strick, J.E. Swimming against the tide: Adrianus Pijper and the debate over bacterial flagella, 1946-56. Isis 87:274-305, 1996; p. 290.