CHAPTER I


Beginnings in Other Lands



           We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow,
           Our wiser sons, I hope, will think us so.      POPE




Why should one attempt to chronicle and, if possible, to interpret early
American microbiology, the optimistic crusading enthusiasm that pre-
vailed, and any recompense we may have made for the inspiration and
the knowledge derived from the older countries? Were there, as
Winslow delighted in saying, an unusual number of "giants in those
days?"' How significant were their contributions to the development
of world microbiology?
   The term bacteriology has until recently been used commonly in
 this country rather than the more accurate, broader one, microbiology,
 chiefly because most of the disease-producing organisms discovered
 during the thrilling, expanding Pasteur-Koch period were bacteria.
 These took the center of the stage and have held it until recently when
 filterable viruses have shoved them into the wings. All are micro-
 organisms whether they belong to the animal or to the vegetable king-
 dom, or whether one is studying them as significant biologic units or as
 disease-inciting parasites. Although my major interest has always been
 in the medical field, I shall scan more briefly other areas and beg any
 who may wish to amplify.
   I am defining "early" in this book roughly as the Victorian
era, al-
 though it will be necessary to begin much further back, and I shall
 consider the period as closing not with the death of the good Queen in
 i9oi, but with World War I, when the philosophies and optimistic
 dreams of that era, many of them, manifestly unfounded, were shat-
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