Article ID: CBB491765073

Making and Unmaking a “Bactericidal” Organism: Sterile Surgical Maggots and Organic Antiseptics in Inter-War America (2022)

unapi

This article charts the popularization of and eventual disengagement with an approach to wound infection control centered on the medical efficacy of living beings (maggots) in 1920s and 1930s America. Baltimore surgeon William Stevenson Baer successfully drew on his wartime experience to promote the use of sterile or “surgical” maggots in the treatment for deep-seated bone infection at this time. This article situates the practices he promoted in the context of President Herbert Hoover’s contemporary establishment of the “associative state,” thereby drawing out the relevance of the latter to medical governance. In so doing, it conveys an image of the development of early twentieth-century infection control that contrasts with narratives centered on medically productive aspects of biomedical industrialization and specialization. The incorporation of surgical maggot research and evaluation within the United States Department of Agriculture played a critical role in the subsequent abandonment of the use of maggots as medical aides. Hoover’s orientation of this institution towards the support of large-scale private enterprise helped motivate efforts to synthetically replicate (and thereby displace) maggots’ medical efficacy. Ultimately, maggot-based therapeutics proved incompatible with conditions created by the orientation of American governmental institutions towards corporate subsidy rather than the support of individuals.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB491765073/

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Authors & Contributors
Schlich, Thomas
Worboys, Michael
Dupree, Marguerite Wright
Igor Telichkin
Komagamine, Tomoko
Gardiner, Susan
Concepts
Surgery
Medicine
Antisepsis
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Germ theory of disease
Biographies
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
20th century
Modern
21st century
18th century
Places
Great Britain
United States
Germany
Hungary
Institutions
Royal Society of London
Royal College of Surgeons, London
St. Bartholomew's Hospital (London)
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