Microbe Hunters
by . New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co. 1926. 8vo. xii+356 pp. Illustrated. $3.50.
IT is well that this book has been written. It should be widely read, for it tells a story of thrilling and universal interest.
The story is that of the development of our knowledge of the minute forms of life, what they do, and how they do it. It tells of mighty hunters and their bags, their struggles, their perils, how they won out. It is the most momentous hunt in the history of man’s well-being. The last half-century covers the actual bagging of the game, as it does the telephone, motor car, aviation, and the radio. These are all good, useful, convenient; but not of vital concern. Man lived long and happily without them; not so long or happily with tuberculosis, yellow and typhoid fevers, diphtheria, and so forth.
Very properly, our author begins with the Dutch lens maker, Leeuwenhoek. To see the microbe is the first step in the hunt. Two hundred years passed before the other two sides of the triangle were added - aniline dyes, which reveal and differentiate the microbes; and the plate culture which eases isolation of this or that microbe, and thus the making of pure cultures and a more rapid advance than the flask culture of Pasteur allowed.
A merit, as it seems to me, of the author’s story is that he does not ignore the faults and foibles of his heroes, Leeuwenhoek would not lend, give away, or sell a lens. Spallanzani dearly loved the dollar. Pasteur was not always serene. Koch neglected his wife for science’s sake. Theobald Smith and Walter Reed, Americans both, stand out as gallant knights, sans peur et sans reproche. It is well, by the way, that our author scores the shameful parsimony of Uncle Sam. Walter Reed, after saving greatly in the present, incalculably in the future, in life, treasure, suffering, — and trade, — could not during life set aside from his army pay family provision, and the Congress, under pressure, increased his widow’s pension to fifteen hundred dollars! And we are told that two thousand a year is the least wage compatible with decent living for a workman’s family with three children!
To only one inaccuracy can I allude. The author allows the impression that a single dose of 600 cures syphilis in any stage or form. The fact is that the drug is of small service in locomotor ataxia and general paresis, the most disastrous results of syphilis to its victim. Moreover, syphilis is called a ‘ loathsome disease.’ Physically loathsome cases are rare to-day, here or in Europe. As for moral loathsomeness, there may be two opinions. The author is a Ph.D., not an M.D.
The amazing effect of 606 on yaws — like syphilis, a spirochetal disease — should be mentioned. Richard Strong, then an army surgeon in the Philippines, in 1910 first showed that a single dose of 606 cures most cases of yaws in a fortnight. Strong’s hunt, as perilous as successful, of pneumonic plague in Manchuria, a 100 per cent mortality disease, is not mentioned.
The author’s style suggests that he has read his Carlyle. But the editor brandishes his blue pencil at me, and I close with my professional advice — Read the book!
F. C. SHATTUCK