Lectures on the Historical Development of the Field of Bacteriology (review)

Friedrich Löffler (1852-1915) was an important player in the rise of bacteriology. Early on he worked in Robert Koch's laboratory, where he isolated the glanders bacillus and did definitive work on diphtheria. Later, together with Paul Frosch, he performed experiments that led to the discovery of viruses. In 1887, about midway through his career, he published a small volume entitled Lectures on the Historical Development of the Field of Bacteriology. The work was intended to have two parts dealing, respectively, with developments before and after 1878; however, the second volume never appeared. Dexter H. Howard has translated Löffler's Lectures; the translation is preceded by an introduction that helps set the stage for Löffler's work. There are numerous notes, some by Löffler but many added by Howard, and Löffler's original index of personal names has been supplemented with a subject index.

While Löffler's book is not an easy read and could under no circumstances be described as engaging, it will certainly be useful to persons researching the history of bacteriology. Indeed, because many of the persons and experiments that Löffler discusses have been all but forgotten, one could argue that the book is likely to be more meaningful to modern historians than it would have been to Löffler's contemporaries.

Major players in any scientific field seldom take time for a sustained evaluation of the persons and work they see as having led to the current state of their specialty, but when they do, their evaluation is always worthy of careful attention—even though, when viewed by an interested party, it is likely to suffer from lack of balance. While Löffler does give attention to French bacteriology, especially to Pasteur, his bias in favor of Koch and the Germans is apparent. For example, he credits F. A. A. Pollender (rather than Casimir Davaine) with discovery of the anthrax bacillus, and he finds that Koch (rather than Pasteur) was the first to make clear the etiology of the disease. Löffler praises Jacob Henle for formulating the causal criteria now known as Koch's postulates, but does not mention that Pasteur was the first to use those criteria to tie anthrax to anthrax bacilli, and that Koch was criticized by contemporaries precisely for being slow to achieve the standards of proof made explicit in the criteria. However, while we, today, may dispute the details and, occasionally, the emphases of Löffler's account, his Lectures cannot be ignored by anyone seeking to understand the development of nineteenth-century bacteriology or medicine. Howard's new book is a welcome and useful addition to the materials available to aid in any such quest.