Other Areas of the Central Valley


blamed for the diseases, but never, as I remember, a contagion transferred
from person
to person. Newly turned soil was popularly accused of causing malaria, but
not
typhoid.
S.     .*......................
  Early in the 589o's a few types of non-pathogenic bacteria were a part
of the study
of cryptogamic botany in the University of Kansas. About 1896 we began to
offer
courses in which the study of pathogenic bacteria was included-following
the sub-
tilis-to-anthracis route probably traversed by more than one institution
of that time.....
After the beginning of the i9oo's the progress of bacteriology and preventive
medicine
followed in Kansas much the same course as in most of the states of that
part of the
country.
   Of the several methods of obtaining pure cultures, more accurate
than the ordinary plating techniques, that of single cell picking by
microcapillary pipettes devised by Barber (1907) has been used with
great success and has passed through many mechanical improvements
in the machines employed. His study of cell-division rates and growth
curves starting from known single cells was important and typical of
Barber's careful studies in diverse fields. The medical school was offi-
cially organized in 1899 with bacteriology as a required course given
by Barber. In 19o6 a department of pathology and bacteriology came
into being, and bacteriology was offered both in the college at Lawrence
and in the medical school in Kansas City.
   Following Barber at Kansas, robust Noble Sherwood began his duties
as assistant in bacteriology in 1910o, reaching full professorship in 1918,
passing beyond our period, and reaching official but not actual retire-
ment in 1952. He has been especially active in studying and writing in
the broad field of immunology.

Lands South of the Mason-Dixon Line
   Broadly speaking, bacteriology came into its own in the South even
more slowly than in the North. The complex causative factors, mixed
in with slavery, cotton culture, a terrific war, and the disastrous,
shameful reconstruction, still in process, have been critically discussed
by many social historians as in Merle Curti's Growth of American
Thought. The College of William and Mary, second oldest in the
country, and other institutions of higher learning such as Jefferson's
University of Virginia emphasized chiefly the liberal arts until towards
the close of our period. As in the North, the study of natural history
was only slowly enriched by subdivision into its parts.
  Three world-devastating microbic diseases in which our southern


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