SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLII. No. 1070 



the betterment of living conditions among 

 the very poor, during the course of which 

 he made a most accurate and painstaking 

 study of the many factors leading to pov- 

 erty and ill-health and suggested remedies 

 for them, the modern conception of hygiene 

 was given the continent of Europe by Max 

 von Pettenkofer, the first professor of hy- 

 giene in Munich and indeed the first pro- 

 fessor of hygiene in any German university. 

 A pupil of Liebig and Voit and a well- 

 trained chemist, Pettenkofer first served as 

 professor of chemistry in Munich, but in 

 1865 transferred his activities to the sci- 

 ence of hygiene, a professorship of which 

 was established for him in this Bavarian 

 institution. More than any other man of 

 his time, Pettenkofer saw clearly the pre- 

 vailing chaos in the facts and theories re- 

 lating to the science of health and especially 

 in regard to the infectious diseases. At 

 that time epidemic after epidemic of 

 typhoid fever devasted the population of 

 such cities as Munich and Vienna, Asiatic 

 cholera was always knocking at the doors 

 of central Europe and frequently obtained 

 admission, while other zymotic diseases 

 spread like wildfire from person to person 

 when once started in a community. The 

 laws passed to control these epidemics were 

 ineffective and the mortality from disease 

 extremely high. The single exception to 

 the prevailing helplessness was the Jen- 

 nerian vaccination which had placed small- 

 pox in the sphere of controllable diseases. 

 Pettenkofer not only realized the inade- 

 quacy of the methods employed to limit the 

 spread of disease, but he also saw that the 

 fundamental difficulty lay in the ignorance 

 of the medical profession in regard to the 

 mode of transmission of infections from one 

 individual to another. In this great crisis, 

 for such indeed he felt it to be, Petten- 

 kofer raised a powerful voice and demanded 

 that the various facts relating to disease 



"en masse" should be thoroughly studied 

 by experts just as the symptoms and pathol- 

 ogy of individual cases were being studied 

 by experts, that after the fundamental facts 

 had been observed on a broad basis, theories 

 to explain these facts should be formulated 

 and submitted to the rigid test of experi- 

 ment, to the end that proper conclusions 

 from fact, theory and experiment might be 

 drawn and measures in accord with these 

 conclusions be carried out. In other words, 

 Pettenkofer demanded that the empiricism 

 of hygiene should be converted into a sci- 

 ence. To accomplish this he further in- 

 sisted that departments of hygiene be estab- 

 lished in the various universities, that 

 proper equipment be provided to gather the 

 data and test the theories of hygiene, and 

 that trained scientists be given the oppor- 

 tunity of carrying out this work. The wide- 

 spread agitation coming from the move- 

 ment originated by von Pettenkofer re- 

 sulted in the establishment of a department 

 of hygiene in the University of Munich, 

 the selection of von Pettenkofer as pro- 

 fessor and the construction of a hygienic 

 institute. This institute founded in 1865 

 still stands, I believe, although plans for a 

 new building upon somewhat more modern 

 lines have now been completed. 



From this brief resume it may be seen 

 that Pettenkofer was really the founder of 

 modern hygiene, at least in so far as the 

 German-speaking races were concerned. 

 He occupies indeed the same position in re- 

 gard to hygiene that Virchow does in 

 pathology.^ The radical movement in 



2 An interesting analogy is also evident in the 

 domain of therapeutics. In this science Schmiede- 

 berg, a pupil of Bueheim, -who founded the first 

 laboratory for the scientific study of drugs in Dor- 

 pat, realized the inadequacy of the existing knowl- 

 edge of the composition and the action of the vari- 

 ous remedies employed by the medical profession 

 largely on an empirical basis. He demanded that 

 the medical profession turn from the clinic to the 



