Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: bacteriology

  • Koch’s postulates revisited

    JMS PearceHull, England Van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1722), a Dutch botanist, using his early microscope observed single-celled bacteria, which he reported to the Royal Society as animalcules. The science of bacteriology owes its origin to two scientists of coruscating originality, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. Pasteur may be described as master-architect and Koch as master-builder of the…

  • Nicholas Senn, the great master of abdominal surgery

    Nicholas Senn was a man with an extraordinary capacity for work, an innovator, always trying new methods, even new experiments that he first conducted on himself. Born in 1844 in St. Gaul, Switzerland, he came to America when he was eight years old. His family settled in Ashford, Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin, then at…

  • Selman Waksman, “father of antibiotics” and conquest of tuberculosis

    Selman Abraham Waksman came to the United States in 1910 and worked for a few years on a farm in New Jersey. Born in a rural town in Ukraine in 1888, he had become familiar as a child with that country’s rich black soil and developed an interest that later influenced the direction of his…

  • Simon Flexner, infectious diseases pioneer

    Simon Flexner. circa 1930s. Courtesy of the Rockefeller Archive Center. Source, Infectious diseases shaped the life of Simon Flexner, who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most successful and prominent scientists in American medicine. His contributions to the field of infectious diseases were legion. He became the first chairman of pathology at…

  • Darling of Panama

    Enrique Chaves-Carballo Kansas City, Kansas, United States Samuel Taylor Darling, widely considered as the foremost American tropical parasitologist and pathologist of his time, was born in Harrison, New Jersey on April 6, 1872. He studied medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Baltimore, graduating in 1903 at the top of his class and…

  • Canadian contributions to the study of pathology

    Guillermo QuinonezLaurette GeldenhuysNova Scotia, Canada Canadian and American medicine in general, and pathology in particular, have developed in parallel and in synchrony since the nineteenth century. Despite Canada’s limited population, scientific cultural similarities and geographical conditions would explain such development. Canadians, some of whom practiced both in the U.S. and Canada, have made important contributions…

  • David Bruce, discoverer of brucellosis

    Early life Every medical student would be expected to know something about brucellosis, though quite unlikely to ever see a case. He would have to know that the disease in man may be caused by the Brucella of goats, swine, or cows, but apparently not by that of dogs, foxes, or fish. Bright students might…

  • Sir Alexander Fleming: A microbiologist at work and play

    Jayant RadhakrishnanDarien, Illinois, United States Sir Alexander Fleming had many talents. His discoveries of lysozyme in 1923 and in 1928 the antibiotic effect of the fungus Penicillium notatum are well known.1 Less well known is that he was a skilled marksman and a member of the London Scottish Regiment during World War I. There is…

  • Blood’s journey: From lab technology to industrial technology

    Cristina Sans-PonsetiBarcelona, Spain Nowadays, it is usual to see donation centers storing blood worldwide. Blood banks meet the demand for blood in order to perform transfusions and produce plasma-based products.1 The use of blood in industrial processes resulted from historical and social contingencies. Our knowledge of the human body, including blood, has changed substantially, along…