title: Evolution of microbiology as seen in the textbooks of Edwin O. Jordan and William H. Park.
abstract: Historians of science account the appearance of textbooks as an important step in the formation and consolidation of a new discipline. The texts of Park and Jordan were both very important in this light; however; they also can be used as a gauge of changing concepts within microbiology in the first four decades after its consolidation as a discipline, 1900-1940. This paper tracks these important texts and through them changing attitudes toward several important concepts: bacterial variation, human/bovine tuberculosis, and the existence of a non-symptomatic carrier state in infectious disease. The two texts are also compared regarding their view of microbes as pathogens vs. microbes as important and ubiquitous ecological agents.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1501, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Strick
mesh_terms: D049673:History, 20th Century; D008829:Microbiology / Q000266:history* / Q000639:trends; D013782:Textbooks as Topic / Q000266:history*; D014481:United States