IsisCB Explore

Thesis ID: CBB001561282

The Science of Small Things: The Botanical Context of German Bacteriology, 1830--1910 (2007)

Matta, Christina (Author)

University of Wisconsin at Madison
Nyhart, Lynn K.

Publication Date: 2007
Edition Details: Advisor: Nyhart, Lynn K.
Physical Details: 257 pp.
Language: English

Outside Links

Academia.edu

Botany Bacteriology 19th century 20th century, early Germany Schleiden, Matthias Jakob

This dissertation argues that reforms in German academic botany in the late 1830s and early 1840s engendered new scientific methods that became the basis for a bacteriology whose roots were grounded in plant physiology and cryptogamic studies rather than in medical studies of pathogenicity. Matthias Schleiden initially proposed studying cryptogams--unicellular organisms such as algae, lichens, and fungi--in 1842. Because cryptogams lacked differentiated systems, they could model physiological processes in individual plant cells. This reliance on cryptogams as models led to the emergence of a distinct subspecialty of botany that focused on their biological properties. Botanists' newfound interest in unicellular and microscopic organisms led them to study bacteria in the 1850s and 1860s. The connection between botany and bacteriology is especially evident in the research of Anton de Bary and Ferdinand Cohn. De Bary's experiments on plant pathogenic fungi demonstrate his commitment to disproving spontaneous generation--an objective he included in his bacteriologal research as well, and which also figured prominently in Cohn's research on bacteria and heat- resistant spores. Cohn's early research on cryptogamic development led him to argue against plasticity of bacterial form--a claim he supported through his physiological research and upon which he based his taxonomic system. Both Cohn and de Bary were influential in the proliferation of botanical bacteriology through their respective institutes; the biological questions their students addressed echoed the physiological problems Schleiden had outlined 40 years earlier. By the end of the century, however, botany and bacteriology had diverged into distinct areas of study. Contextualizing bacteriology within botany brings to light research heretofore ignored by histories of medical bacteriology. More important, this study challenges the underlying assumptions that have defined how historians of science and medicine depict bacteriology's development into a scientific discipline. This dissertation decenters pathogenicity as a guiding principle in the history of bacteriological research by emphasizing bacteriology's beginnings in plant physiology, thus acknowledging bacteriology's debt to physiology, botany, and agriculture.

...More

Description Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 68/08 (2008). Pub. no. AAT 3278930.

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001561282/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Berger, Silvia; (2009)
Bakterien in Krieg und Frieden: eine Geschichte der medizinischen Bakteriologie in Deutschland 1890--1933 (/isis/citation/CBB001252747/)

Article Bowen, Elliott; (2013)
Limits of the Lab: Diagnosing “Latent Gonorrhea,” 1872--1910 (/isis/citation/CBB001252857/)

Article Aeka Ishihara; Ulrike Enke; (2018)
Über die wissenschaftliche Karriere des Bakteriologen Taichi Kitashima und den Einfluss Shibasaburô Kitasatos und Emil von Behrings (/isis/citation/CBB385297512/)

Article Charpa, Ulrich; (2003)
Matthias Jakob Schleiden (1804--1881): The History of Jewish Interest in Science and the Methodology of Microscopic Botany (/isis/citation/CBB000650032/)

Article Jahn, Ilse; (2010)
Nachdruck: Matthias Jacob Schleiden an der Universität Jena (/isis/citation/CBB001033945/)

Article Werner, Petra; Holmes, Frederic L.; (2002)
Justus Liebig and the Plant Physiologists (/isis/citation/CBB000300871/)

Article Werner, Petra; (2001)
Humboldt als Vermittler: Schleiden und Mohl contra Liebig (/isis/citation/CBB000770071/)

Thesis Mylott, Anne Louise; (2002)
The Roots of Cell Theory in Sap, Spores, and Schleiden (/isis/citation/CBB001562452/)

Article Güttler, Nils Robert; (2011)
Scaling the Period Eye: Oscar Drude and the Cartographical Practice of Plant Geography, 1870s--1910s (/isis/citation/CBB001034619/)

Article Baytop, Asuman; (2008)
Joseph Bornmüller'in (1862--1948) Anadolu'da Bitki Toplama Gezileri (/isis/citation/CBB001220714/)

Article Jahn, I.; Schmidt, I.; (2010)
Matthias Jacob Schleiden and the Meetings of German Natural Scientists and Physicians (/isis/citation/CBB001232298/)

Article Claas Kirchhelle; (2020)
The Forgotten Typers: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Bacteriophage-Typing (1921–1935) (/isis/citation/CBB187011632/)

Article Hüntelmann, Axel C.; (2013)
A Different Mode of Marketing? The Importance of Scientific Articles in the Marketing Process of Salvarsan (/isis/citation/CBB001320752/)

Article Mathias Schütz; (2020)
Hygiene und Historiographie: Karl Kisskalts epidemiologischer Revisionismus und das Erbe Max von Pettenkofers (Hygiene and historiography: Karl Kisskalt's epidemiological revisionism and the legacy of Max von Pettenkofer) (/isis/citation/CBB408049525/)

Article Martin Schneider; (2023)
Louis Pasteur und Robert Koch: Bakteriologie und Impfstoffentwicklung (Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch: bacteriology and vaccine development) (/isis/citation/CBB661839424/)

Article Gradmann, Christoph; (2008)
Locating Therapeutic Vaccines in Nineteenth-Century History (/isis/citation/CBB000831744/)

Article Schlich, Thomas; (2012)
Asepsis and Bacteriology: A Realignment of Surgery and Laboratory Science (/isis/citation/CBB001250961/)

Book Gradmann, Christoph; (2009)
Laboratory Disease: Robert Koch's Medical Bacteriology (/isis/citation/CBB001020408/)

Article Métraux, Alexandre; (2000)
Managing Small-Scale Entities in the Life Sciences (/isis/citation/CBB000110070/)

Article Hüntelmann, Axel C.; (2007)
Diphtheria Serum and Serotherapy. Development, Production and Regulation in fin de siècle Germany (/isis/citation/CBB000820148/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}