certifiably insane, maybe, but surely driven, arrogant, and obsessed. Preoccupied with their scientific quests, they’ll go to any lengths for The Answer. Their persistence is pathological, as is their confidence: Emil Behring, in search of a cure for diphtheria, fairly massacres whole herds of guinea pigs. Louis Pasteur, fearfully protective of his achievements, responds to an attack on his theories, writes de Kruif, with a paper whose arguments “could not have fooled the jury of a country debating society.”
Some years ago, Tracy Kidder won a Pulitzer Prize for The Soul of a New Machine , an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the frenzied development of a new computer and the impassioned men who did it. For many people, bits and bytes and silicon chips make up a world overwhelmingly alien and gray; but Kidder pictured it as burning with a white heat of intellectual and personal ferment. He reported the gritty dailiness of the work as much as the high drama; yet it was a romanticized portrayal for all that. Romanticization, it seems, is an occupational hazard of the genre, a genre whose prototype is, by any measure, Microbe Hunters.
“This plain history would not be complete if I were not to make a confession,” de Kruif writes on its final page. “I love these microbe hunters,from old Antony Leeuwenhoek [inventor of the microscope] to Paul Ehrlich [discoverer of a syphillis cure]. 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.”
De Kruif finds his subjects full of grievous flaws: Antony Leeuwenhoek is sadly unimaginative, failing to guess that the microbes he sees under his microscope bear disease. Koch, who discovered the tuberculosis bacillus, is a cold technician cursed, to pathological excess, with German thoroughness. Louis Pasteur is an arrogant showman, impossibly rash and sloppy. But none of this detracts from de Kruif’s awe of his subjects; rather, it humanizes them— and helps to forge intense reader interest. The author could doubtless fashion a story of Attila the Hun that recounted every particular of his savagery, yet managed to “humanize” him.
De Kruif’s fierce attachment to his subjects mirrors that of the scientists themselves for their work. Pasteur, his theories questioned by posthumously published research, rises indignantly on the floor of the French Academy of Medicine to denounce his enemies, then runs off to perform the exquisite experiment that proves him right after all.
Elie Metchnikoff, a morphine addict inclined to periodic suicide attempts, goes off to Sicily with his young bride. There, he examines starfish larvae under the microscope, sees microscopic organisms eating other microscopic organisms - and gives the rest of his scientific life over to the holy grail of the “phagocytes” he’s discovered and named, and the immunity to disease they confer.
De Kruif’s prose, it must be said, too often degenerates into an effervescent cutesiness that to some readers will seem like pandering. Vexatious, too, are certain mannerisms of style and certain pet phrases—like “wee beasts” and “little animals” to describe microorganisms, and words like “gorgeous” to describe an elegant experiment, or “stuff” for a microbial stew. For de Kruif, “flashes of lightning” are forever illuminating a scientist’s way.
But such stage-lit prose arises from the author’s wish to illuminate dramatically a terrain that might otherwise be mistaken for being alien, stark,and gray. De Kruif knows it’s not. When he describes experiments (with impressive clarity), we await their outcome with real eagerness. We are there as Ehrlich finds his “magic bullet” ...as Lazzaro Spallanzani conceives a way to isolate a single microorganism and then, under the microscope, sees it split in two before him.
“Two hundred and fifty years ago an obscure man named Leeuwenhoek looked for the first time
Some years ago, Tracy Kidder won a Pulitzer Prize for The Soul of a New Machine , an intimate behind-the-scenes look at the frenzied development of a new computer and the impassioned men who did it. For many people, bits and bytes and silicon chips make up a world overwhelmingly alien and gray; but Kidder pictured it as burning with a white heat of intellectual and personal ferment. He reported the gritty dailiness of the work as much as the high drama; yet it was a romanticized portrayal for all that. Romanticization, it seems, is an occupational hazard of the genre, a genre whose prototype is, by any measure, Microbe Hunters.
“This plain history would not be complete if I were not to make a confession,” de Kruif writes on its final page. “I love these microbe hunters,from old Antony Leeuwenhoek [inventor of the microscope] to Paul Ehrlich [discoverer of a syphillis cure]. 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.”
De Kruif finds his subjects full of grievous flaws: Antony Leeuwenhoek is sadly unimaginative, failing to guess that the microbes he sees under his microscope bear disease. Koch, who discovered the tuberculosis bacillus, is a cold technician cursed, to pathological excess, with German thoroughness. Louis Pasteur is an arrogant showman, impossibly rash and sloppy. But none of this detracts from de Kruif’s awe of his subjects; rather, it humanizes them— and helps to forge intense reader interest. The author could doubtless fashion a story of Attila the Hun that recounted every particular of his savagery, yet managed to “humanize” him.
De Kruif’s fierce attachment to his subjects mirrors that of the scientists themselves for their work. Pasteur, his theories questioned by posthumously published research, rises indignantly on the floor of the French Academy of Medicine to denounce his enemies, then runs off to perform the exquisite experiment that proves him right after all.
Elie Metchnikoff, a morphine addict inclined to periodic suicide attempts, goes off to Sicily with his young bride. There, he examines starfish larvae under the microscope, sees microscopic organisms eating other microscopic organisms - and gives the rest of his scientific life over to the holy grail of the “phagocytes” he’s discovered and named, and the immunity to disease they confer.
De Kruif’s prose, it must be said, too often degenerates into an effervescent cutesiness that to some readers will seem like pandering. Vexatious, too, are certain mannerisms of style and certain pet phrases—like “wee beasts” and “little animals” to describe microorganisms, and words like “gorgeous” to describe an elegant experiment, or “stuff” for a microbial stew. For de Kruif, “flashes of lightning” are forever illuminating a scientist’s way.
But such stage-lit prose arises from the author’s wish to illuminate dramatically a terrain that might otherwise be mistaken for being alien, stark,and gray. De Kruif knows it’s not. When he describes experiments (with impressive clarity), we await their outcome with real eagerness. We are there as Ehrlich finds his “magic bullet” ...as Lazzaro Spallanzani conceives a way to isolate a single microorganism and then, under the microscope, sees it split in two before him.
“Two hundred and fifty years ago an obscure man named Leeuwenhoek looked for the first time
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