Robert William Reid (1)

A relatively brief and readable account of the coming of the germ theory told as the stories of the great men (and one woman) who did the work. Mary Montagu, Edward Jenner, Ignaz Semmelweis, Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, Robert Koch, Paul Ehrlich, Elie Metchnikoff, Alexander Fleming, and Almoth Wright are the principal workers scrutinized, but the stories are rich enough to include many others, e.g. Emile Roux, Leonard Colebrook, Emil Behring, Friedrich Löffler, Shibasaburo Kitasato, and Sahachiro Hata. The author has a special interest in these men's personalities and the source of their achievements; I don't know if this aspect of the book is very successful, but it adds a lot of zest to what might otherwise be pretty dry accounts. Several of the protagonists were manic-depressive, some were highly argumentative, and most were obsessive. Ideas were stolen and some projects were published without mention of an idea's source, or even of who had done the work. There are some nice black and white images, but no references, and no bibliography.… (more)