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In 1899, the first cases of plague were recognised in Paraguay and a few months later in Buenos Aires as part of the third plague pandemic. In the first decades of the twentieth century, plague slowly advanced towards the Argentinian hinterland. In this paper we focus on the production of scientific knowledge about plague in Argentina, where a core of bacteriologists emerged early on. We show how they not only played a central role in the complex process of plague recognition and intervention, but also influenced the scientific development of bacteriology in Argentina and potentially in South America. We argue that bacteriology became a key tool in articulating the promises of modern science with political and economic interests, allowing the Argentinian government to extend its territorial control over Buenos Aires and the hinterland. This can be seen in two different configurations of the plague as an epistemic and political object in Argentina. In the first period, from 1899 to 1910, plague was a problem linked to the ports. In this section of the article, we show how plague became an important issue in the development of bacteriology in Argentina, how this research contributed to new intervention measures and, in some cases, developed innovative ideas about serotherapeutic treatments and the characteristics of the disease. In the second period, from the mid-1910s until the 1940s, research in Argentina provided new evidence of the 'rural' nature of plague, a process in deep dialogue with research on plague among peri-domestic and wild rodents carried out in other parts of the Americas, Europe and Africa. This article thus aims to contribute to a history of bacteriology that highlights the role of non-European centres, like Argentina, in the production and circulation of bacteriological knowledge., Competing Interests: Declarations. Conflicts of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of this article., (© 2024. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

The present article examines the material, epistemological, and social dimensions of late nineteenth-century anti-cholera serum controversies that unfolded in Tokyo and Berlin. It seeks to shed light on the conflicting values embedded in the construction of scientific evidence during the transnational exploration of bacteriology as an effective response to controlling epidemics. Driven by Japanese health authorities' initiatives, Japanese bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo participated in the elaboration of bacteriological research oriented toward therapeutic application during his stay in Berlin. This work coincided with the rise of a controversy over anti-cholera serum in relation to the animal experiments conducted by Richard Pfeiffer, a German bacteriologist. After presenting a series of animal experiments and certain clinical cases conducted in Germany, France, and Egypt in the context of the controversies, the article analyzes a therapeutic trial conducted by Kitasato in Japan during an 1895 cholera epidemic. His strategy, bringing new data to the transnational debate through an intensive investment of resources in the trial, provoked criticism from his Japanese and German colleagues. These critics questioned Kitasato's method and pointed out the low social value of this experimental serum therapy, performed in highly equipped conditions. Through this case study, the present article highlights: a) a strong tension between transnational research interactions among bacteriologists and local medical practices during public health campaigns against epidemics at the turn of the twentieth century; b) the importance of analyzing the interconnected effects of local, national and transnational frameworks of medical science when examining the increasingly intertwined relationships between laboratory science and clinical medicine., Competing Interests: Declarations Conflict of interest The author declares no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article., (© 2024. Springer Nature Switzerland AG.)

Server Kamil became one of the most prominent doctors during the period of the Ottoman Empirey. Server Kamil, who specialized in bacteriology and sanitation, made a name for himself primarily through his fight in the memories against epidemic diseases on the Caucasus front during World War I. He was sent to the Caucasus front as chief physician of Erzurum Red Crescent (Hilâl-i Ahmer) Hospital, and made great efforts to prevent the disease typhus-which was a major problem in the region-as soon as he reached the front line. He worked long and hard to develop a vaccine to prevent typhus, which affects thousands of soldiers and civilians. He also played a pioneering role in establishing important institutions such as the Sivas Smallpox Vaccine Laboratory and the Rabies Treatment Centre, which accomplished significant work and achieved great success both during the World War I and in the period that followed. This article attempts to clarify the activities of Server Kamil on Caucasus front during World War I based on the documents of the Turkish Red Crescent Archive, the reports of the Red Crescent Society., Competing Interests: Declaration of conflicting interestsThe author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

The major human pathogen Streptococcus pneumoniae has been the subject of intensive clinical and basic scientific study for over 140 years. In multiple instances, these efforts have resulted in major breakthroughs in our understanding of basic biological principles as well as fundamental tenets of bacterial pathogenesis, immunology, vaccinology, and genetics. Discoveries made with S. pneumoniae have led to multiple major public health victories that have saved the lives of millions. Studies on S. pneumoniae continue today, where this bacterium is being used to dissect the impact of the host on disease processes, as a powerful cell biology model, and to better understand the consequence of human actions on commensal bacteria at the population level. Herein we review the major findings, i.e., puzzle pieces, made with S. pneumoniae and how, over the years, they have come together to shape our understanding of this bacterium's biology and the practice of medicine and modern molecular biology., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

The bacteriologist and Nobel Prize winner Robert Koch (1843-1910) is one of the most important and best-known scientists in German history. Many people associate him not only with the institute named after him (today the Robert Koch Institute is Germany's National Public Health Institute), but above all, with his work as a "microbe hunter". Koch achieved world fame with the discovery of the tuberculosis pathogen in 1882. To research and combat infectious diseases, he undertook expeditions to foreign countries. This article deals with a lesser-known episode in Robert Koch's life - his years as a young rural doctor in the then Prussian provinces of Brandenburg and Posen. After a chronological description of Robert Koch's "wandering years", the focus is directed to today's culture of remembrance. The question is discussed in which way, if at all, the memory of Robert Koch is maintained at the authentic places., Competing Interests: Die Autor*innen geben an, dass kein Interessenkonflikt besteht. Benjamin Kuntz ist Mitarbeiter des Robert Koch-Instituts., (Thieme. All rights reserved.)

Jules Bordet came to the Institut Pasteur soon after his MD graduation at the Université libre de Bruxelles, thanks to a grant from the Belgian government. He joined there the laboratory of Elie Metchnikoff, the father of phagocytes and cellular immunity. Amazingly, he will decipher there some of the key mechanisms of humoral immunity initially discovered by the German school against which his mentor was fighting. He described the mechanisms that govern bacteriolysis and hemolysis, following the action of immune sera. Even if he favored the term alexin coined by Hans Buchner, he is indeed one of the founding fathers of the complement system (term coined by Paul Ehrlich). It is for these works that he was awarded in October 1920 the 1919 Nobel Prize. Back in Belgium, he became the director of Institut Pasteur du Brabant and made another landmark discovery, namely the identification of the bacillus of whooping cough, now named Bordetella pertussis., (© 2020 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)

The year 2019 marked the 140th anniversary of the inauguration of the first Institute of Hygiene, which was established for Max von Pettenkofer at the university of Munich. After Pettenkofer, his successors tried to advance the science of hygiene each in their own specific way, highlighting different aspects and trying to relate them to Pettenkofer's legacy: Max von Gruber promoted an understanding of hygiene which was more and more tied to constitutional and racial factors, Karl Kisskalt tried to revise a perceived bacteriological paradigm, and Hermann Eyer focused on preventive public health measures. All of those influences had a more or less explicit and distinct connection to the general development of German medicine in the first half of the 20th century and its culmination in National Socialist crimes. The history of Munich's Institute of Hygiene after Pettenkofer illustrates the differing scientific and ideological paths this development pursued by the examples of its three long-term protagonists and their relationship to National Socialism., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest There is no conflict of interest to declare., (Copyright © 2020 The Author. Published by Elsevier GmbH.. All rights reserved.)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Jules Jean Baptiste Vincent Bordet, to give him his full name, the Belgian immunologist and bacteriologist.

American physician Emanuel Libman (1872-1946) was a generalist with Sherlockian diagnostic skills ("secret-divining eyes" according to Einstein) whose achievements were recognized by the scientific community and the public. Personal aspects of Libman were revealed in an oral history conducted with psychiatrist George L. Engel, a nephew who was raised in his house, and show Libman to be an intensely private person, contrasting with the image of him as a mentor and teacher. Yet Libman as a young physician and investigator remains absent in these opposing biographical reflections. His papers housed at the National Library of Medicine contain a series of letters sent home from his year of postgraduate study in Europe in 1897. These letters, which have not been previously described in the medical literature, create a window into the experiences of a young American physician abroad. Libman's letters create a framework for understanding a typical European course of study for American physicians while tracing his career and personal development. Specifically, his correspondence highlights foundational experiences in bacteriology and pathology and explores his encounters with European anti-Semitism. The letters reveal a young doctor interested in history and sightseeing, awed by medical luminaries, concerned about establishing a career, and increasingly aware of intolerance.

Dreadful culprits from the minuscule world, indeed, but … what about poverty, war, and terrorism in the macroscopic nowadays world?

Starting from the hypothesis that laboratories played an important role in pediatrics becoming an autonomous discipline, this article studies the influence of scientific travel on the appropriation of new methodologies by Spanish pediatricians and child-care experts in the first third of the twentieth century. To do so, it analyzes the travel awards granted by the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios e Investigaciones Científicas. It describes the scientific geography created by the program and takes an in-depth look at the role of mentors - especially Gustavo Pittaluga (1876-1956) - in this process. In addition to a prosopographical study of the group, it presents three cases that demonstrate the importance of the program in bringing pediatrics into contact with bacteriology, pathological anatomy and biochemistry.

Mary Osborn was a native Californian. She was an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked in the laboratory of I.L. Chaikoff. She received her PhD at the University of Washington, where her work on the role of folic acid coenzymes in one-carbon metabolism revealed the mechanism of action of methotrexate. After postdoctoral training with Bernard Horecker in the Department of Microbiology at New York University (NYU), she embarked on her research career as a faculty member in the NYU Department of Microbiology and in the Department of Molecular Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. In 1968 she moved as one of the founding faculty of the new medical school of the University of Connecticut, where she remained until her retirement in 2014. Her research was focused on the biosynthesis of the endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) of gram-negative bacteria and on the assembly of the bacterial cell envelope. She made seminal contributions in these areas. She was the recipient of numerous honors and served as president of several important scientific organizations. Later in her career she served as chair of the National Research Council Committee on Space Biology and Medicine, advisory to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which produced an influential report that plotted the path for NASA's space biology research program in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Dr. Osborn died on Jan. 17, 2019.

Richard Julius Petri's status as inventor of the culture dish that bears his name has been subject to a number of challenges over the years. Both those bacteriologists who claimed self-recognition for the invention, and those to whom it was attributed by their various advocates were all contemporaries of Petri. The evidence assembled here indicates that no single individual-including Petri-ought to be accorded credit for the inception of that shallow, circular, covered culture dish which, it transpires, is a simultaneous invention made by half a dozen bacteriologists active in the mid-1880s and ultimately owes its emergence to the prevailing bacteriological zeitgeist., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Introduction: On June 9, 1945 the Zurich cantonal government issued the lifetime deportation from Switzerland for Prof. Dr. med. vet. Leonhard Riedmüller (1898-1976) and his spouse Helena, née Eltze (1910-1990), both German citizens on grounds of Riedmüllers' membership in the NSDAP, "Landesgruppe Schweiz". Riedmüllers' several attempts to appeal at court were not successful. Riedmüllers biography shows that he served in the German Army at the Western front during WW I. Following the war he studied Veterinary Medicine at the University of Munich where he received the degree of Dr. med. vet. Moving to Zurich in 1926, Riedmüller took a position as veterinary bacteriologist at the University of Zurich. In 1941 he was promoted and became head of the Institute of Veterinary Bacteriology. He left Europe in 1947 for Brazil and took a position as a veterinary bacteriologist at a government laboratory. After retiring from his position in Brazil he returned to Germany where he passed away in 1976. Based on available documents from several Swiss archives the question is discussed whether Riedmüllers' deportation as public enemy in 1945 was appropriate or if Swiss authorities might have been tempted to sacrifice Riedmüller as a pawn in consideration of Switzerlands international political position immediately after the end of WW II.

The heart of this article is the transmission of selected chapters from the Japanese bacteriologist Taichi Kitashima's (1870-1956) autobiographical memoirs (in Japanese, Jiden) published in 1955, in which Kitashima reports on his stay in Marburg in a very personal and subjective way. Like other Japanese physicians of his generation, Kitashima spent several years in Germany in order to work with the serum researcher Emil von Behring and continued his education there. The contact came through Kitashima's teacher Shibasaburô Kitasato, who had worked with Behring in Berlin on questions of immunology. The memoir gives insight into Behring's laboratory work and his relation to his "subordinates". The editors investigate to what extent Kitashima's assessment, made from a distance of fifty years, of his stay in Germany as "wasted time" was accurate, given the advantages that arose from having been part of a vibrant European scientific community, including encounters in the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and why he cultivated his contacts with Germany and the Behring family during National Socialism.

Introduction: The purpose of this article is to examine the Army service of Dr. William H. Welch during World War I., Materials and Methods: Archival research utilizing prime source documents in the William H. Welch Collection of the Alan M. Chesney Medical Archives for the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions., Results: Welch joined the Army at the age of 67 after serving as one of the principal transformational forces for reforming medical education in the United States and founding the first academic institution for educating public health professionals in the United States, the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene. His longstanding relationship with Army Surgeon General William Gorgas served as the backdrop for Welch's service. Welch served as both a staff officer and as a traveling medical inspector general, assessing the medical care of troops preparing for overseas duty. He did not adapt particularly well to military dress and decorum but his status as one of the icons of American medicine rendered these shortcomings insignificant. Welch was joined in Army service by a number of American medical luminaries-both Mayo brothers, George Crile, and Harvey Cushing among them. Although Welch remained on active duty for only 13 months, he maintained a nominal relationship with Army medicine through appointment to the Medical Officer Reserve Corps until the time of his death., Conclusion: 2016 marks the centennial of the establishment of the first independent academic institution in America dedicated to education and training of professionals focused on public health and hygiene issues. 2017 marks the centennial of U.S. entry into World War I. Dr. William H. Welch played an important role in both of these historic events and, although his active service was brief, the impact of his example was substantial. Analysis of his military career in its full historical context provides insight into the relationship between academic medicine and military medicine during periods of armed conflict., (Reprint & Copyright © 2017 Association of Military Surgeons of the U.S.)

The study shows the contribution of Matija Perak to the development of phthisiological service in Petrinja and the suppression of TB in the Sisak - Banija region in the period from 1946 to 1978. Having obtained data from the archive documents, it was possible to reconstruct his curative and preventive activities in the suppression of morbidity and mortality from TB in the Sisak - Banija region. His organizational and managerial, professional-scientific and publicistic work is highlighted, as well as his role in the reorientation of the profession towards chronic non-TB diseases and the education of new generations of phthisiologists in Petrinja.

Sir William Watson Cheyne is largely known to medical history as Lord Lister's 'trusted assistant'. 1 He spent a lifetime defending Joseph Lister's (1827-1912) antiseptic principle in the wake of scepticism and misunderstanding. However, his main contribution to Lister's work was in the embryonic field of bacteriology in the 1870s-1890s, which brought him into contact with continental researchers, particularly Robert Koch (1843-1910). In this field, Cheyne built an independent reputation as an assessor, chronicler and promoter of continental laboratory methodology. He pioneered bacteriological training in British teaching hospitals and incorporated laboratory testing into case notes as standard procedure. This paper reconsiders Cheyne's contribution to the development of bacteriology in British medicine at the end of the 19th century. It examines his motives in promoting new laboratory techniques and the methods he used to embed them in hospital procedure. It also considers how he continued to use bacteriological arguments to keep the Listerian antiseptic principle on the medical agenda well after Lister withdrew from active involvement in the field., (© The Author(s) 2015.)

Pierre and François have been the key figures of the Mauriac five children. Pierre introduced his hospital service in Bordeaux to bio-clinic and was a well-known professor before he became the dean of the Faculty from 1936 to 1945. As hero during the Great War he remained loyal to the "victor of the battle of Verdun" while his brother Frangois became a fervent 'Gaullist', "each of them climbing the same mountain along another side" according to François Mauriac in 1966. Pierre was a writer too and a medical adviser for the novelist.

Victor Vaughan is well known for his numerous accomplishments and services to science, medicine, and public health. This paper discusses one of Dr Vaughan's earliest and most significant accomplishments: founding the Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Michigan in 1887, the first in the United States. The vision, initiative and planning demonstrated by this episode illustrate the characteristics that enabled Vaughan to have such an accomplished and storied career., (© The Author(s) 2016.)

Germ theory, derived particularly from the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch, shook the foundations of medical knowledge in the second half of the nineteenth century and triggered a revolution in the "art of healing." The search for specific microbes for diseases guided the investigations of the researchers converted to the Pasteurian tenets. This paper aims to show what role the Gazeta Médica da Bahia journal played in spreading knowledge about bacteriology to the medical communities in Bahia and throughout Brazil. Some works and reflections by the newspaper's authors at the time are presented, as are some of the controversies that help depict the way germ theory was divulged in Brazil throughout the nineteenth century.

The Swiss-born medical researcher Karl Friedrich Meyer (1884-1974) is best known as a 'microbe hunter' who pioneered investigations into diseases at the intersection of animal and human health in California in the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, historians have singled out Meyer's 1931 Ludwig Hektoen Lecture in which he described the animal kingdom as a 'reservoir of disease' as a forerunner of 'one medicine' approaches to emerging zoonoses. In so doing, however, historians risk overlooking Meyer's other intellectual contributions. Developed in a series of papers from the mid-1930s onwards, these were ordered around the concept of latent infections and sought to link microbial behavior to broader bio-ecological, environmental, and social factors that impact hostpathogen interactions. In this respect Meyer-like the comparative pathologist Theobald Smith and the immunologist Frank Macfarlane Burnet-can be seen as a pioneer of modern ideas of disease ecology. However, while Burnet's and Smith's contributions to this scientific field have been widely acknowledged, Meyer's have been largely ignored. Drawing on Meyer's published writings and private correspondence, this paper aims to correct that lacuna while contributing to a reorientation of the historiography of bacteriological epidemiology. In particular I trace Meyer's intellectual exchanges with Smith, Burnet and the animal ecologist Charles Elton, over brucellosis, psittacosis and plague-exchanges that not only showed how environmental and ecological conditions could 'tip the balance' in favor of parasites but which transformed Meyer thinking about resistance to infection and disease.

Frederick Griffith (1879-1941) was an English bacteriologist at the Pathological Laboratory of the Ministry of Health in London who believed that progress in the epidemiology and control of infectious diseases would come only with more precise knowledge of the identity of the causative microorganisms. Over the years, Griffith developed and expanded a serological technique for identifying pathogenic microorganisms, which allowed the tracing of the sources of infectious disease outbreaks: slide agglutination. Yet Griffith is not remembered for his contributions to the biology and epidemiology of infectious diseases so much as for discovering the phenomenon known as 'transformation'. Griffith's discovery, for many, was a pure case of serendipity whose biological relevance had also largely escaped him. In this paper, I argue that the key to understanding the significance of bacterial transformation - and the scientific legacy of Fred Griffith - rests not only on it initiating a cascade of events leading to molecular genetics but also on its implications for epidemiology based on the biology of host-parasite interactions. Looking at Griffith's entire career, instead of focusing only on the transformation study, we can better appreciate the place of the latter within Griffith's overall contributions. Presented in this way, Griffith's experiment on bacterial transformation also ceases to appear as an anomaly, which in turn leads us to rethink some of the most prevalent historical conceptions about his work.

With attention to the experiences, agency, and rights of tuberculosis (TB) patients, this symposium on TB and ethics brings together a range of different voices from the social sciences and humanities. To develop fresh insights and new approaches to TB care and prevention, it is important to incorporate diverse perspectives from outside the strictly biomedical model. In the articles presented in this issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, clinical experience is married with historical and cultural context, ethical concerns are brought to bear on global health, and structural analyses shed light upon the lived experience of people living with TB. The relational and reciprocal dimensions of care feature strongly in these discussions, which serve as a poignant reminder that behind each of the yearly deaths from TB is a deeply personal story. No single discipline holds a monopoly on how to care for each of these people, but strong cases are made for support from mental health and social workers in addressing the kaleidoscope of needs in TB prevention. As the World Health Organization moves towards the goal of eliminating TB globally by 2050, attending to the needs of TB patients serves global interests to lower disease burden and to develop better integrated communities worldwide.

Shortly before 1910, Dr Boucard creates his laboratory in Paris. It manufactures and sells a drug based on lactic ferments the " Lactéol du Dr Boucard" (Dr's Boucard Lactéol) that will make the fortune of the physician. The article explains Dr Boucard's life and his relationship with the arts (painting and photography), and tells the story of his laboratory until the 2000s, referring to the pharmacists who succeeded them, as well as the various buildings where were elaborated Lactéol's variants.