Microbe Hunters Revisited Paul de Kruif and the Beginning of Popular Science Writing

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Microbe Hunters RevisitedPaul de Kruif and the
Beginning of Popular Science Writing

• Stephen B. Greenberg, MD, MACP
• Dean of Medical Education, Baylor College of
  Medicine

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LeeuwenhoekFirst of the Microbe Hunters

• Two hundred and fifty years ago an obscure man
  named Leeuwenhoek looked for the first time into
  a mysterious new world peopled with a thousand
  different kinds of tiny beings, many of them more
  important to mankind than any continent or
  archipelago.

Chapter 1, Paragraph 1, Microbe Hunters, Paul de
Kruif
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LeeuwenhoekFirst of the Microbe Hunters

• Leeuwenhoek, unsung and scarce remembered, is
  now almost as unknown as his strange little
  animals and plants were at the time he discovered
  them. This is the story of Leeuwenhoek, the first
  of the microbe hunters. It is the tale of the
  bold and persistent and curious explorers and
  fighters of death who came after him. It is the
  plain history of their tireless peerings into
  this new fantastic world. They have tried to
  chart it, these microbe hunters and death
  fighters. So trying they have groped and fumbled
  and made mistakes and roused vain hopes. Some of
  them who were too bold have died done to death
  by the immensely small assassins they were
  studying and these have passed to an obscure
  small glory.

Chapter 1, Paragraph 2, Microbe Hunters, Paul de
Kruif
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Paul de Kruif(1890 1971)

• Born Zeeland, Michigan
• Married Mary Fisher
• PhD student of Fredric Novy 1916
• The Primary Toxicity of Normal Serum JID (1917)
• Pancho Villa expedition
• WWI Hygienic Corps France
• Worked on anti - toxin for gas gangrene

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Scientific Blood Lines
Robert Koch
Emile Roux

Frederick Novy
Paul de Kruif
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Paul de Kruif

• Worked at Pasteur Institute and met Emile Roux,
  Maurice Nicolle, Felix dHerelle, and Hans Zimser
• Returned to Novy and studied blood dissolving
  toxin of Streptococcus bacillus
• 1920 Fell in love with lab technician Rhea
  Barbarin and divorced his wife

Photo from Chernin E. Paul de Kruifs Microbe
Hunters and an Outraged Ronald Ross. Reviews of
Infectious Diseases May June 1988 10 (3) 661
- 7.
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Simon Flexner

• Rockefeller Institute
• Research on respiratory infections in rabbits
• Asked de Kruif to resign in 1922 after writing
  scathing portrait of Rockefeller in Our Medicine
  Men

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Henry Louis Mencken

• Gave advice about writing
• Took personal interest in de Kruif
• Introduced him to Morris Fishbein (JAMA editor)

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Paul de Kruif and Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Morris Fishbein, MD
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Arrowsmith
Jacques Loeb
Dr. Max Gottlieb
Frederick Novy


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Covers of an Americanand Spanish edition of the
Book
From Summers WC. Microbe Hunters Revisited.
Internatl Mircobiol 1998 1 65-8.
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Table of ContentsMicrobe Hunters by Paul de Kruif

1. Leeuwenhoek First of the Microbe Hunters
2. Spallanzani Microbes Must Have Parents!
3. Pasteur Microbes are a Menace!
4. Koch The Death Fighter
5. Pasteur And the Mad Dog
6. Roux and Behring Massacre the Guinea Pigs
7. Metchnikoff The Nice Phagocytes
8. Theobald Smith Ticks and Texas Fever
9. Bruce Trail of the Tsetse
10. Ross vs. Grassi Malaria
11. Walter Reed In the Interest of Science and for
    Humanity!
12. Paul Ehrlich The Magic Bullet

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Malaria
vs.
Giovanni Battista Grassi
Sir Ronald Ross
From Chernin E. Paul de Kruifs Microbe Hunters
and an Outraged Ronald Ross. Reviews of
Infectious Diseases May June 1988 10 (3) 661
- 7.
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Ronald RossGrenada Grenadines,1995(1857 1932)

• Born in India
• Joined Indian Medical Service
• Studied malaria in birds
• Described oocysts of the malaria parasite in
  the walls of the stomach
• Grey, dappled winged mosquito
• Won Nobel Prize in 1902

Shampo MA and Kyle RA. The History of Malaria on
Stamps. In Minnesota Medicine. Retrieved January
22, 2012 from http//www.minnesotamedicine.com.
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Ronald Ross Notebook
Ross notebook where he first described pigmented
malaria parasites in mosquitoes
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Giovanni Battista GrassiItaly, 1955(1854
1925)

• Graduated from Pavia
• Wanted to be zoologist
• Became Professor of Zoology at Catania
• Studied malaria in birds in Catania
• 1890 published on malarial cycle in
  different species of birds
• Professor of Comparative Anatomy in Rome in
  1895
• Expert on life cycle of eels
• Did not win Nobel Prize

Shampo MA and Kyle RA. The History of Malaria on
Stamps. In Minnesota Medicine. Retrieved January
22, 2012 from http//www.minnesotamedicine.com.
17
Giovanni Battista Grassi

• On the basis of the epidemiology of malaria and
  the
• distribution of mosquitoes present in the
  malarial zones,
• he focused his investigations on three species
  suspected
• of malarial transmission, Anopheles claviger and
  two
• Culex species and he communicated this result to
  the
• Lincei Academy on September 19, 1898.
• On November 6, 1898, Grassi announced to the
  Lincei
• Academy that, with two colleagues, Drs. Bignami
  and
• Bastianelli, he had infected a volunteer by
  exposing him
• to the bite of these three mosquito species.
• On November 28, 1898, a formal note was sent to
  the
• academy and read in the academic session of
  December 4, 1898, where it was
  announced that a healthy man in a non malarial
  zone had contracted tertian malaria after being
  bitten by an experimentally infected Anopheles
  claviger.
• The experimental phase ended on December 22
  with a communication to the Lincei Academy
  that described the entire development cycle of
  the plasmodium in the body of Anopheles claviger
  and stated that it corresponded to what Ross had
  described for Proteosoma in Culex pipiens in the
  malarial cycle of birds.

From Capanna E. Grassi versus Rossi Who Solved
the Riddle of Malaria? Int Microbiol. 2006
March 9(1)69 - 74.
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Clifford Dobell

• Clifford Dobell (18861949) was a highly
  respected researcher working at the National
  Institute of Medical Research, Hampstead, and
  since 1918 a Fellow of the Royal Society. He had
  written The Amoebae Living in Man (1919) and The
  Intestinal Protozoa of Man (1921). Dobell was
  fascinated by the discoveries of the
  seventeenth-century Dutchman Antony van
  Leeuwenhoek, who had described various little
  animals with the help of his self-designed
  microscopes. Dobell put his notes on van
  Leeuwenhoek at De Kruif's disposition for the
  writing of an essay that would become the first
  chapter of Microbe Hunters.

From Verhave JP. Clifford Dobell and the Making
of Paul de Kruifs Microbe Hunters. Medical
History. 2010 October 54529-36.
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Clifford Dobell

• In one evening I could tell you more about
  Ross, Manson, Grassi, and everything else, than
  you could dig out for yourself in one year in
  N.Y., U.S.A. And I could tell it to you
  accurately and fully, from my own completely
  biased standpointso that you would only have to
  go home and type it all out, ready for press.
  Well, if you won't come, I must send you some
  references. You must read
• 1. Memoirs by Ronald Ross (London. John
  Murray. 1923) (Largely lies.)
• 2. A lettervery moderate, for I retranslated
  and castigated it myselfin Nature, last year.
• 3. A short paper by Grassi in Parasitology
  Vol. XVI, No. 4, p. 355 December, 1924
  (Translated by me.)

From Verhave JP. Clifford Dobell and the Making
of Paul de Kruifs Microbe Hunters. Medical
History. 2010 October 54529-36.
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Clifford Dobell

• This is a most complicated story, but the facts
  very briefly are as follows
• Ross, instigated by Manson in England, and helped
  at every time by him, tried to discover how
  malaria is transmitted from man to man in India
  and failed utterly.
• Ross then,again egged on by Mansontried to
  discover the mode of transmission of
  bird-malaria and succeeded.
• Ross and Manson were unable to apply the
  knowledge gained from birds to the study of human
  malariabecause they knew next to nothing about
  zoology. Consequently, they couldn't do anything
  moreonly guess (and guess wrong).
• Grassi and his collaborators in Italy had
  meantime got on the track of the true story
  regarding human malaria. They had already made
  some progress, when they heard of Ross's results
  with birds and as Grassi was a good zoologist,
  he at once saw their significance, and went ahead
  and solved the problem.

From Verhave JP. Clifford Dobell and the Making
of Paul de Kruifs Microbe Hunters. Medical
History. 2010 October 54529-36.
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Clifford Dobell

• Ross now claims that his work on birds solved
  the problem of human malaria. But it didn't,
  because even after he had finished the work on
  bird-malaria, he was hopelessly in the dark
  himself regarding the transmission of human
  malaria. So was Mansonwhose ideas throughout
  were nearly all wrong. It was Grassi who
  discovered that malaria in man is transmitted by
  Anopheles, and who worked out the complete
  development of the human parasite in this
  mosquito.
• Ross is a very dirty dog. He told - that he
  intended to live on the discoveries for the rest
  of his life. He has done so. Grassi is dirty,
  but not a dirty dog. He is a great zoologist, but
  savage or almost rabid when roused. I believe he
  is honest - after spending a long time
  corresponding with him and testing his statements
  in every way I can. He has always played the game
  with me, and I admire him as a worker, though not
  as an individual human being.

From Verhave JP. Clifford Dobell and the Making
of Paul de Kruifs Microbe Hunters. Medical
History. 2010 October 54529-36.
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Ross
Grassi
Experimental Systematic Comparative
Intuitive Empirical
No Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
Dobell
Paul de Kruif
Microbe Hunters published
Ross threatens lawsuit
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Books by de Kruif



Our Medicine Men (1922) Microbe Hunters
(1926) Hunger Fighters (1928) Men Against Death
(1932) Why Keep Them Alive (1937) Seven Iron Men
(1937) The Fight for Life (1938) The Male Hormone
(1945) Health is Wealth (1940) Life Among the
Doctors (1949) Kaiser Wakes the Doctors (1950) A
Man Against Insanity (1957) The Sweeping Wind
(1962)


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Paul de Kruif Medical Reporter/Activist

• Reported on medical discoveries
• Visited labs
• Exposed malnutrition among U.S. poor
• Campaign against tuberculosis (Detroit) and
  syphilis (Chicago) and poliomyelitis
• Skirmishes with the AMA
• Morris Fishbein
• Apostle of Kaiser health plan and then attacked
  it
• Alcoholics Anonymous supporter

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Paul de Kruif

• 200 magazine articles
• Broadway Play
• Yellow Jack
• Movie The Magic Bullet
• FDR and March of Dimes
• and National Foundation
• for Infinite Paralysis

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Paul de Kruif The Challenge of Aging

• The Male Hormone (1945)
• Life among the Doctors (1949)
• A Man Against Insanity (1958)

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Paul de KruifMedical Conscience of America

• Love/hate relationship with doctors, researchers
  industrialists and politicians
• Michigan State Senate and House of
  Representatives awarded his widow and third wife,
  Eleanor, a framed resolution
• University of Michigan
• Paul de Kruif Chair in Academic Pathology
• Hope College
• de Kruif writing prize
• Buried in Zeeland

From Verhave JP. Paul de Kruif Medical
Conscience of America. In Swierenga RP, Nyenhuis
JE, Kennedy N, eds. Dutch American Arts and
Letters in Historical Perspective. Holland, MI
Van Raalte Press 2008 191 202.
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Microbe HuntersThen and Now
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The Next Generation of Microbe Hunters
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