274 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



FKITZ SCHAUDi™ 1 



By Professor THOS. H. MONTGOMERY, Jr., Ph.D. 



UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS 



TpEOM the medical and biological world a genius has been taken. 

 -*- and it is not saying too much to conclude that the only man 

 of the past half century who may be considered in any way the equal 

 of Louis Pasteur is Fritz Schaudinn. Yet when Schaudinn died, on 

 the twenty-second of last June, he was in only his thirty-fifth year. 

 Truly those whom the gods love die young! The work of his life is 

 so recent that only the perspective of time can throw it out in its true 

 proportions; but rarely has it fallen to the lot of any man to receive 

 the quick recognition of value that has been so generally conceded to 

 Schaudinn. 



With the exception of a few contributions on the worm Ankylos- 

 tomum, on bear animalcules (Tardigrades) , and on bacteria, the atten- 

 tion of Schaudinn was devoted entirely to the Protozoa; Dujardin, 

 Max Schultze and Schaudinn, each of these marked a great advance 

 in our knowledge of the unicellular animals, and of them Schaudinn 

 covered the most difficult field. For his study of the Protozoa was an 

 intensive examination of their complex life cycles, undertaken first to 

 elucidate their genetic relationships and the meaning of alternation of 

 generations, and second to break a road to the checking of human dis- 

 eases. His discoveries are of fundamental importance for the under- 

 standing of the genesis of the cell, particularly of the phenomena of 

 conjugation and the reduction of the chromosomes, for our ideas of 

 the genetic relations of the various Protozoan groups, and for the 

 prevention of disease. It may be said that before Schaudinn entered 

 the field almost all human infectious diseases were supposed to be due 

 to bacteria, with the exception of the malaria parasite and certain few 

 agents doubtfully associated with unimportant disorders. To Schau- 

 dinn more than to any other belongs the credit of the demonstration 

 that the Protozoa are fully as efficient as the bacteria in transmitting 

 and engendering disease. Indeed, the greatest advance in medicine of 

 the past twenty years may be said to be just this conclusion. Schau- 

 dinn's particular merit lies in his insistence that the first step in com- 

 bating any disease must be to understand the whole life cycle of the 

 disease germ; and his genius, in his admirable and unequaled success 



1 Contributions from the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Texas, 

 No. 83. 



