52 Background of "Work and Study in Public Health 



ology." ^^ The " overthrow of the doctrine of spontaneous gen- 

 eration" was placed first among "some of the milestones," and, 

 second, was the "' discovery that putrescible fluids (exclusive of 

 milk) will not decay after boiling, if protected from the bacteria 

 of the air by means of cotton-plugs." Each was a proof of the 

 value of the fundamental knowledge revealed by Pasteur. . 



Only the invention by Robert Koch of a method to obtain pure 

 cultures for the isolation of bacteria and fungi on solid media, a 

 technique employing a poured plate,'° later improved by the Petri 

 dish,^^ and gelatin for streak cultures, was regarded by Smith as 

 possibly more important." This was believed with full knowledge 

 of the influence in developing antiseptic surgery which Pasteur's 

 method of protecting his flask cultures from air contaminations 

 had on the great English surgeon, Joseph Lister. Lister applied 

 the principle to protect wounds in surgery, and he took also 

 from Pasteur his dilution or mineral solution method for ob- 

 taining cultures and elaborated a method " to obtain pure cul- 

 tures of " the lactic acid bacillus by gradual isolation of a single 

 bacterial cell with a clever syringe of his invention, the only 

 method of consequence," Dr. Garrison has said,'* "between Klebs 

 (1874)'=^ and Koch (1877)."'*' 



At the great International Medical Congress of London, held in 

 August, 1881, when Pasteur's discovery of a vaccine remedy 

 against anthrax was explained amid loud cheering from the 

 audience, Robert Koch's poured-plate method for obtaining pure 

 culture colonies of microorganisms on solid media was also de- 

 scribed and demonstrated before Lister, Pasteur, and other world- 

 known celebrities in pathology. Koch's original sterile nutrient 

 jelly or gelatin bacteria beds were soon to be displaced or supple- 

 mented by vegetable jelly derived from seaweed, or agar-agar; and 



**E. F. Smith, Bacteria in relation to plant diseases 1: 152-153, Carnegie Insti- 

 tution of Washington, Sept. 1905. 



■"' Robert Koch, Zur untersuchung von pathogenen organismen, Mittheil. a. d. 

 kaiserlichen Gesundheitsamte 1: 1-48, l4 pi., Berlin, 1881. 



" R. J. Petri, Fine kleine modification des Koch'schen plattenverfahrens, Central- 

 hlatt fiir Bakleriologie 1 (9): 279-280, 1887. 



''- See, Fifty years of pathology, op. cit., 18. 



^^ Trans. Pathological Soc. of London 29: 425-467, 1878. 



'* Introduction to the history of medicine, op. cit., 590. 



" Op. cit. See Bacteria in realtion to plant disease, op. cit., 1: 226. 



""" Koch's 1877 publications will be mentioned and cited a few paragraphs, post. 



