48 Background of Work and Study in Public Health 



in medical schools. Medical students in large numbers were going 

 to Berlin, London, Paris, or Vienna to complete, or take all of, 

 their studies, and the main reasons were superior teachers and 

 superior laboratory and clinical facilities.^* 



Erwin Smith, while yet in Ionia, might have read of the nev/ 

 laboratories of pathology established by Dr. Welch and Dr. 

 Prudden. More likely, he became interested in their work, after 

 their founders returned from their studies with Dr. Robert Koch. 

 He probably knew something of the work of Dr. Billings after he 

 became connected with the Surgeon General's office. Not yet had 

 Dr. Sternberg become president of the American Public Health 

 Association. Many years would pass before Sternberg would be 

 president of the American Medical Association, and not until 1893 

 would he be Surgeon General. Smith's learning about pathology 

 was in 1882 still a matter of books and scientific papers he could 

 obtain. In Lansing he had access to better libraries. But his learn- 

 ing about the works of Pasteur and Koch was still quite meagre. 



Since the latter half of the 1870's, Pasteur, " the pioneer of 

 modern preventive inoculation against disease," and Koch, to 

 whom "we owe the development of the correct theory of specific 

 infectious diseases," °^ had been at work in their laboratories. We 

 do not know whether Erwin Smith knew anything of Pasteur's 

 earlier studies of fermentation and biogenesis. We do know, 

 however, that by 1882 he believed that the " researches of [John] 

 Tyndall and Pasteur" had "settled in the negative" the question 

 of the spontaneous generation of plant and animal forms. ^'^ We 

 know also that he knew something of the medical research work 

 of Edwin Klebs of Prague, who, along with Pasteur, did much to 

 win over pathologists to the bacterial theory of infection.'' Young 

 Smith at this time appears not to have known of the great French- 

 man's important studies of alcoholic fermentation and diseases of 

 wine and his investigations of microorganisms in beer. This work, 

 for the most part, preceded the year 1875. But, during the last 

 half of the 1870's,^^ Pasteur's studies of the virulent diseases of 



^* F. H. Garrison, Intro, to the Hist, of Med., op. cit., Ibd. 



°® F. H. Garrison, Introd. to the hist, of med., op. cit., 575. See also to the same 

 effect, William Henry Welch etc., op. cit., 146. 



^^ Michi.s^an School Moderator 3 (13): 199 f., Nov. 30, 1882. 



^■^ F. H. Garrison, Intro, to the hist, of med.. op. cit., 580-581. 



^^ Idem, ')l6-'bll. Also, Dr. C. A. Herter, The influence of Pasteur on medical 

 science, Bull. Johns Hopkins Hospital 14 (153): 327-330, Dec. 1903- 



