Book Review: Microbe hunters by Paul de Kruif

The Wellcome Collection this spring will be hosting an exhibition of the history of dirt. From 24 March the Wellcome Trust will present art, artefacts, films and photographs exploring the realm of dirt and its relationship with us.

The filthy and insanitary have long been companions of disease. With this in mind I have dusted off a history of microbiology that summarises this fascinating science.

In Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters he recounts the lives of the pioneering scientists who fussed with glassware, boiled up nutrient broths and peered down microscopes into the bizarre world of microorganisms.

Published in 1926, de Kruif’s history is still an illuminating and enjoyable read today. Spanning three centuries; the discoveries of his microbe hunters have fundamentally changed our view of the world around us.

This is a world which is more than comfortable with microbes. The idea of microscopic beasties like bacteria no longer boggles the mind.

We have anthropomorphised them in adverts: we battle them with bleach in our homes and form yoghurt-mediated alliances with them in our guts.

Although feared in our kitchens, we no longer fear for our lives. For us in the West the thought of a dirty work-surface is more terrifying than the thought of cholera.

De Kruif takes the reader through the heroes of microbiology, from the forgotten to the famous. He begins with a very much unappreciated draper from 17^th century Delft, Antony Leeuwenhoek.

Leeuwenhoek; the first man to espy microorganisms. The man who wowed learned men of London’s Royal Society like Sir Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle with his descriptions of a hitherto inconceivable realm.

The history concludes with 20^th century microbe hunter Paul Ehrlich whose preparation 606 took the fight to the wasting infection of syphilis.

From Leeuwenheok and taking in those showmen “the magnificent Spallanzani and passionate Pasteur” or the “impresario” Robert Koch to Ehrlich, de Kruif uses vignettes and anecdotes to paint characters of them all.

The language is at times a little idiosyncratic though not eccentric or dated. De Kruif approaches each of his microbe hunters like a novelist his characters; characterising with dialogue and narrative, expounding their vices and virtues to flesh them into credible men.

On the fly-leaf of my very beaten second edition from 1930 there is an inscription, dated July 1933, from a professor to a young scientist. The junior researcher has received Microbe Hunters as he leaves his master’s lab.

This is a little link to the past for my copy alone but for me this strikes deep at the heart of this text as a whole.

Microbe Hunters is a lifeline that pulls a parade of brilliant men out of the murk of forgotten history. It brings them once more to life.

It is unashamedly populist, it has a verve and zeal which betrays the author’s love for this subject. A charming raconteur, de Kruif bubbles through these pages. It reads like an ebullient young man’s description to his friends some wonders he has discovered as a course of his studies as they sit in a Viennese café or London coffee shop.

De Kruif ends with a declaration that is self-evidence and so clear through each chapter it almost seems redundant:

I love these microbe hunters, from old Antony Leeuwenhoek to Paul Ehrlich. Not especially for the discoveries they have made nor for the boons they have brought mankind. No. I love them for the men they are. I say they are, for in my memory every man jack of them lives and will survive until my brain must stop remembering.”

They were explorers who expanded the sphere of human knowledge. For de Kruif it was the spirit in which they undertook their discoveries rather than the discoveries themselves that has charmed him so. His adoration lies in the ardent vitality with which they sought out the secrets of the world and the fury with which they defended their discoveries.

Image from Wikimedia Commons. Source: KRUIF, Paul de. Mikrobenjäger. Orell Füssli, Zürich, 1927.