Article ID: CBB187011632

The Forgotten Typers: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Bacteriophage-Typing (1921–1935) (2020)

unapi

Using bacteriophages to type (identify) bacteria was one of the most important tools of twentieth-century epidemiology. Challenging existing accounts’ focus on Anglophone research, this paper shows that modern phage-typing arose in German-speaking continental laboratories from 1921 onwards. Several factors contributed to this rise: the limitations of existing phenotypic systems; demobilized German bacteriologists’ interwar engagement with phages as a means to explore bacterial type variation; the existence of well-stocked and well-defined microbial culture collections with a strong focus on typhoid and paratyphoid; the standardization, free provision and calibration of phage diagnostic systems by a centralized laboratory network; and phage-typers’ implicit agreement to black-box ontological controversies about phages' nature in favour of a mission-oriented focus on practical epidemiological applications. The result was an experimental system that simultaneously treated phages as technical objects and epistemic things. Although the human network supporting phage-typing collapsed after the Nazi rise to power, Weimar-era phage researchers laid the foundation for modern phage-based diagnostics and epidemiology.

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Article Neeraja Sankaran (2020) Introduction: Diversifying the Historiography of Bacteriophages. Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science (pp. 533-538). unapi

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https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB187011632/

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Authors & Contributors
Sankaran, Neeraja
Schütz, Mathias
Toljan, Karlo
Neumeyer, Sybille
Lacković, Zdravko
Kostyrka, Gladys
Concepts
Bacteriology
Virology
Epidemiology
Medicine
Public health
Bacteriophages
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
20th century
Places
Germany
Weimar Republic (1919-1933)
San Francisco (California)
United States
Poland
Europe
Institutions
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research
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