THE SCIENCE OF BACTERIOLOGY AND ITS RELATION 

 TO OTHER SCIENCES^ 



LEO F. RETTGER 



Yale University 



Bacteriology is a child of many adoptions, ever precocious, 

 but not yet fully mature. Born with a definite mission to serve 

 and to save, it has re-created pathology, given inspiration and 

 new life to botany and zoology, contributed generously of its 

 substance to agriculture and home economics, and lent itself as 

 the framework around which modern hygiene and preventive 

 medicine have been built. Yet all the while it has conducted 

 itself in competent hands as a pure science. 



Bacteriology has, however, been the victim of gross paternal- 

 ism by those sciences which it has come to redeem. Botany in 

 particular has long laid a claim to it; but it is to pathology that 

 it has been holding itself in bondage, as the result perhaps of their 

 close affiliation since the early days of Pasteur, Lister and Koch. 

 Like the sturdy youth who has long passed his majority, but 

 who suddenly realizes his own powers to conduct affairs for 

 himself or to claim due recompense for his arduous labors in 

 support of a stern father or guardian, bacteriology must and will 

 emerge from its servile state. 



Nor has the bacteriologist himself been entirely free from 

 blame. In spite of abundant opportunities for the most valuable 

 scientific researches, and for the promulgation and application 

 of important principles and relationships, faulty and incomplete 

 preparation have too often taken the place of long and thorough 

 training in the subject. Many positions have been, and are, even 



1 Address of the President of the Society of American Bacteriologists, deliv- 

 ered at Nineteenth Annual Meeting, Washington, December 28, 1917. 



103 



THE JOURNAL OP BACTERIOLOGY, VOL. Ill, NO. 2 





