4 A MANUAL OF THE ASPERGILLI 



DeBary's laboratory in the early 1850's seems to have introduced suffi- 

 cient culture of the molds found to form the beginning of a permanent 

 literature. This started with the recognition that the yellow perithecia, 

 called Eurotium herbariorum by Link, which developed among the heads 

 of Aspergillus glaucus upon his herbarium specimens, were actually borne 

 upon the same mycelium (fig. 7). Fresenius, Cramer, Wilhelm, and Brefeld 

 in Germany followed. Raulin and van Tieghem in France developed the 

 fermentation of the tannins in gall nuts to gallic acid in the 1860's with 

 comparative study of other molds as a corollary. In 1880, in Paris, 

 Bainier began publishing his studies of molds as they appeared in phar- 

 maceutical products. He was followed by Gueguen, the Sartorys, and others 

 in France, and somewhat later by Biourge in Louvain, Belgium. 



Wehmer, in Hanover, began publishing his biochemical studies in 1891, 

 which led him to develop his more pretentious monograph published 

 in 1901. Blochwitz undertook to develop his "system" early in the new 

 century, but the World War delayed its publication until 1929. Meanwhile, 

 Thorn and Church, beginning about 1910, had published The Aspergilli 

 as a taxonomic monograph in 1926. Aspergilli were listed in cryptogamic 

 floras, lists, manuals, and special papers of many kinds over the whole period, 

 but critical discussions were few. 



In somewhat over 200 years, an enormous mass of Aspergillus literature 

 has accumulated. Justice to the writers at each stage in the development 

 of our information calls for an analysis of the conditions which surrounded 

 its development. Practically all of the early literature was microscopical: 

 the worker confined his study to specimens brought in from natural sources, 

 each of which was often assumed to be typical of some species. Each 

 worker used the microscope that he had at hand and the technique of 

 study already known to him. Life histories and comparative examination 

 of material from many sources were disregarded. Publications appeared 

 as parts of floristic studies of particular regions, as reports of organisms 

 found in particular lesions of man or animals, or as observed in special 

 industrial connections. After DeBary's group began to study organisms 

 in comparative culture, the number of publications began to increase 

 rapidly. By 1929-1930 Tamiya and Morita were able to cite 2,424 titles of 

 papers which, in some way, concerned the Aspergilli, in their published 

 Bibliographie von Aspergillus, 1729 bis 1928. A mathematical analysis 

 of this literature was published by Tamiya in 1931. Referring to his 

 table 1, 71 titles appeared in the 125 years before DeBary's 1854 paper; 

 73 appeared in the next 18 years preceding Brefeld 's 1872 papers; 236 in 

 the next 19 years just preceding Wehmer's oxalic acid reports in 1891. 

 All of this may be called the period of physiological morphology. The 

 remaining two thousand, published between 1891 and 1928, represent the 



