Wayne State University School of Medicine - Yearbook (Detroit, MI)

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The Baumann Archive Pasteur in his laboratory. A hundred years ago when the infant roots of our Medical School were taking hold in the soil adjacent to Harper Hospital, Microbiology as a science was coming alive in liuropc-initially in France where Louis Pasteur was laying to final rest the theory of spontaneous gen- eration. The great contributions of science are those that alter or develop new concepts, and Pasteur's second great contribution to medical Microbiology was the dis- covcry that a certain species of bacteria caused a disease in silk worms and a species of bacillus produced anthrax in sheep. This finding stands as a monumental landmark that was followed by the concept that such organisms could be attenuated by aging or drying and injected to produce immunity. While the French held the day, the German scientist Robert Koch fl878j isolated the tubercle bacillus and established his postulates for proving the etiology of infectious agentsg through his investigations the concepts of bacterial hypersensitivity had their origins. The dis- covery of antitoxin by VonBehring led to an investigation of immune mechanisms which Paul Ehrlich placed upon a basis of molecular interaction and specificity-a con- cept that holds true today although his aside chainw theory has been discarded. Pasteuris fermentation studies led Lord Lister in 1867 to the concept of microbial agents as causes of putrefac- tion in wounds and its elimination through antiseptic surgery. Following these developments, the bacterial agents of disease were rapidly discovered, but chemo- therapy remained a long sought goal. This was initiated by Ehrlich in 1910 with arsphenamine for syphilis. Al- though penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1929, its effective use was delayed for many years dur- ing which Gerhard Domagk of Germany in 1935 devel- oped the first of the sulphonamides Cprontosilj and ushered in the modern era of chemotherapy which today has revolutionized the treatment of bacterial diseases. 95

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DEPARTME T OF MICRQBIOLQGY Fred L. Rights, Chairman '39 155 J CJ SITTING Qleft to rightj: Lily Jones, Yi-Chi Kong, L. Gronkowski. STANDING: Richard Berk, Lawrence Weiner, Fred L. Rights, Charles Jeffries, Robert Swanborg.

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,JH 'inf' ' gals-nn wi.-qw. fi xiii' RV l ' 'ff' -LW 5 N r f H- vlu Q A .x qv, Burlin H. Ackles Sharon T, Agree Stephen W. Alcorn jack M. Amicujr. Jon C. Anderson iQ ur- 1. Roman W. Andrushkiw Patricia A. Ball Ahmet Baydur Erwin D. Berman Edward Bernacki,jr 96