Joseph lister: First use of a bacterium as a 'model organism' to illustrate the cause of infectious disease of humans

Notes and Records of the Royal Society

Volumn 64, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 59-65

  Santer, Melvin ^a  

^a HAVERFORD COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

Clonal population; Fermentation; Infectious disease; Model organism; Pure culture

Indexed keywords

EID: 76949104319     PISSN: 00359149     EISSN: 17430178     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1098/rsnr.2009.0029     Document Type: Article

References (42)

1. J. Lister, 'On the lactic fermentation and its bearing on pathology', Trans. Pathol. Soc. Lond. 29, 425-467 (1877-78).
2. Ibid., p. 451.
3. Ibid., p. 463.
4. R. A. Weiss, 'Robert Koch: the grandfather of cloning?', Cell 123, 539-542 (2005). Weiss points out (p. 540): 'In 1878, Joseph Lister described the limiting dilution method in liquid culture for isolating bacteria in pure form'. This procedure and the plating method of Koch were the first examples of bacterial cloning.
5. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 425.
6. W. C. Summers, 'How bacteriophage came to be used by the phage group', J. Hist. Biol. 26, 255-267 (1993):
7. M. Weber, 'Model organisms: of flies and elephants', in Philosophy of experimental biology (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 154-187;
8. P. Meneely, 'Model organisms', in Advanced genetic analysis: genes, genomes, and networks in eukaryotes (Oxford University Press, 2009), ch. 2, pp. 29-90.
9. T. Willis, A medical-philosophical discourse of fermentation (H. Clark, London, 1684).
10. Ibid., p. 105.
11. It is both interesting and fascinating that Willis equates the alteration of the consistency of milk when it undergoes souring to the character of blood under conditions of infection (p. 56): 'the blood is subject to alteration, which happens ⋯ most often to Milk ⋯ from a Morbific cause.' Two hundred and nineteen years later Lister provided a solution to the cause of the souring of milk, comparing it to an infectious disease.
12. J. Liebig, Animal chemistry in its application to physiology and pathology, 3rd edn (ed. W. Gregory) (John Wiley, New York, 1852).
13. Ibid., p. 127.
14. Ibid., p. 143.
15. Ibid., p. 145.
16. Ibid. Liebig suggested that the fermentation associated with the 'yeast plant' by its growth produces a material capable of acting on sugar in the same manner as emulsin acts on amygdalin, or diastase on starch, a catalytic phenomenon described in detail on pages 131-137.
17. J. R. Partington, A history of chemistry (4 volumes, 1961-70), vol. 4 (Macmillan, London, 1964), pp. 261-264 and 302.
18. J. Henle, 'On miasmata and contagia' (transl. G. Rosen), Bull. Inst. Hist. Med. 6, 907-983 (1938).
19. L. Pasteur, 'Mémoire sur la fermentation appelée lactique', C. R. Acad. Sci. 45, 913-916 (1857);
20. 'Mémoire sur la fermentation alcoolique'. Ann. Chim. Phys. (3) 58, 323-426 (1860).
21. T. Schwann, Microscopical researches into the accordance in the structure and growth of animals and plants (tr. H. Smith) (Sydenham Society, London, 1857).
22. Ibid., p. 191.
23. Ibid., p. 192.
24. Ibid., p. 193.
25. Ibid., p. 193.
26. Ibid., p. 197.
27. Ibid., p. 197.
28. Henle, op. cit. (note 5), p. 921.
29. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 426.
30. The contentious nature concerning the composition and origin of the agent that caused infectious disease and fermentation is extensively covered by M. Pelling in Cholera, fever and English medicine 1825-1865 (Oxford University Press, 1976);
31. J. K. Crellin, 'The dawn of the germ theory: particles, infection and biology', in Medicine and Science in the 1860s (ed. F. N. L. Poynter), pp. 57-76 (Wellcome Institute, London, 1968).
32. The period of the 1870s in England is also discussed by J. E. Strick, Sparks of life: Darwinism and the Victorian debates over spontaneous generation (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000), chs 5 and 6.
33. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 437;
34. Lister had previously written: 'milk supplied for domestic use will turn sour in summer weather within twenty-four hours, yet of all the many instances in which I have observed alterations in milk caused by organisms introduced through atmospheric exposure, in no single case did the true lactic acid fermentation occur': 'A further contribution to the natural history of bacteria and the germ theory of fermentative changes', Q. J. Microsc. Sci. 13, 397 (1873). In Pasteur's paper several products were produced in addition to lactic acid, because there was more than one microorganism growing in the milk. In short, there was not a pure culture.
35. C. Henry, J. Marbrook, D. C. Vann, D. Kodlin and C. Wofsy, 'Limiting dilution analysis', in Selected methods in cellular immunology (ed. B. B. Mishell and S. M. Shiigi), pp. 138-152 (W. H. Freeman, San Francisco, 1980).
36. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 451.
37. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 442.
38. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 454-455.
39. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 442.
40. C. Lawrence and R. Dixey, 'Practising on principle: Joseph Lister and the germ theories of disease', in Medical theory, surgical practice: studies in the history of surgery (ed. C. Lawrence), pp. 153-215 (Routledge, London, 1992), at p. 179.
41. J. Lister, 'A further contribution to the natural history of bacteria and the germ theory of fermentative changes', Q. J. Microsc. Sci. 13, 380-408 (1873), at p. 381.
42. Lister, op. cit. (note 1), p. 439.