Frederick Novy and the Development of Bacteriology in Medicine
250 pages, 6 x 9
31 photographs, 2 tables
Hardcover
Release Date:30 Apr 2017
ISBN:9780813585093
Frederick Novy and the Development of Bacteriology in Medicine
Rutgers University Press
At the turn of the twentieth century, Frederick Novy was the leader among a new breed of full-time bacteriologists at American medical schools. Although historians have examined bacteriologic work done in American health department laboratories, there has been little examination of similar work completed within U.S. medical schools during this period.
In Frederick Novy and the Development of Bacteriology in Medicine, medical historian, medical researcher, and clinician Powel H. Kazanjian uses Novy’s archived letters, laboratory notebooks, lecture notes, and published works to examine medical research and educational activities at the University of Michigan and other key medical schools during a formative period in modern medical science.
In Frederick Novy and the Development of Bacteriology in Medicine, medical historian, medical researcher, and clinician Powel H. Kazanjian uses Novy’s archived letters, laboratory notebooks, lecture notes, and published works to examine medical research and educational activities at the University of Michigan and other key medical schools during a formative period in modern medical science.
The 'hero narrative' of science that honours stars such as Isaac Newton and Marie Curie often obscures the multitudes who lay the foundations – that centuries-old chain of curious minds. In this biography, physician and historian Powel Kazanjian pulls one from that multitude into the light: microbiology pioneer Frederick Novy. Kazanjian's detailed and authoritative account reveals how Novy (1864-1957) did fundamental work that shaped the field's development, and introduced basic research into medical training.
Novy has been unduly neglected by historians to date, and Kazanjian performs an important service in correcting this gap; Frederick Novy and the Development of Bacteriology in Medicine is a well-written and timely piece that alters our understanding of the rise of biomedical teaching and research in the United States.
Powel Kazanjian's Frederick Novy and the Development of Bacteriology in Medicine tells a critical, insightful, and overlooked story in the history of medicine and science. It is a triumph of scholarship and narrative.
The great value of Kazanjian’s work is in providing a case study of how American medicine was made scientific in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.'
Kazanjian has given us a much desired account of a very significant career. His main point, that Novy’s bacteriology differed from the application-focused William Welchian science of public health, expands our knowledge of American medical bacteriology. It is well founded and important. The book expands our scope of what the history of medical bacteriology is all about.
POWEL H. KAZANJIAN, MD, PhD is a professor and chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, at the University of Michigan Medical Center and a professor in the department of history at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Frederick Novy and the Origins of the Michigan Hygienic Laboratory
2 What Novy Did in His Medical School Laboratory
3 Making Medical Education Scientific
4 Defining Bacteriology as a Discipline in Its Early Years
5 Significance for American Culture: Arrowsmith
6 Making a Scientific Career in Medicine
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Introduction
1 Frederick Novy and the Origins of the Michigan Hygienic Laboratory
2 What Novy Did in His Medical School Laboratory
3 Making Medical Education Scientific
4 Defining Bacteriology as a Discipline in Its Early Years
5 Significance for American Culture: Arrowsmith
6 Making a Scientific Career in Medicine
Conclusion
Notes
Index
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