#vaultsofmann

As many of us know, the farming life can be an epically tough vocation. And as some of will also be keenly aware, this has been more true for some than for others.  Thanks to a recent scanning project, we’ve had our eye on the story of The Modern Farmer, a publication produced by the National Federation of Colored Farmers (NFCF) during a stretch of economic history that was hard for most folks in the United States—1929 through 1949—but especially so for African Americans confronting the vise of Jim Crow in the American South. As Black History Month closes out for this year, we’re pleased to share a little of what we’ve learned about this remarkable publication and the people who produced it.

Issued monthly, The Modern Farmer was first and foremost a periodical release of current news of interest to African American farming households. Its purpose: To share information that would advance the efforts of the NFCF in building the capacity of America’s black farmers to prosper. Founded in 1922 by a group of African American entrepreneurs and attorneys led by broker James P. Davis and heavily influenced by the teachings and philosophy of Booker T. Washington at the Tuskegee Institute, the NFCF had an initial early focus on building cooperatives and procurement/distribution networks. With this approach, the Federation hoped to secure reliable markets, good prices and fair interest rates for participants, attract a growing membership to these networks, and ultimately make it possible for rural black communities to take care of themselves. Over the years, as it became clear that (yet again) black farmers were being excluded  from the benefits of New Deal legislation and programs, the Federation also turned attention and energy towards strengthening African American farmers' political clout.

Flip through the monthly issues of The Modern Farmer across its 20 years of publication, and you can't help but be impressed with the community purpose that emanates from its lively pages. Reports of farmstead success and tragedy, pithy advice on personal care, nutrition and diet, and school news published in its pages evoke a vibrant sense of shared experience and mutual care. Announcements about scholarship programs and religious conventions publicize opportunities for personal growth. News about lynching events and racially discriminatory hiring practices at specific firms and factories inform its readership on the specific dangers and challenges (and sometimes also more hopeful breakthroughs) happening at local, state as well as national levels.  Of course, the periodical’s dominant content most certainly pertains to farming, as it provided a steady feed of news relevant to farm techniques and operations (e.g. "Ladybugs Used to Save Apples from Insect Parasite"), trends in markets and product marketability (e.g. "Federal Buying of Wheat Said to Be Justified"  and "Potash Improves the Baking Quality of Michigan Potatoes"), and financing ("Biggest Fund in United States History Authorized by Senate: Two Billion Dollar Credit Assures Real Relief." ).  And certainly not least: Across all of its pages, a strong editorial case for the power of organizing and collective strategizing will not be lost on any reader.

Given its timing, the NFCF was not poised particularly well for success. The 1930s were, after all, years that Jim Crow was maturing to its full, noisome ripeness in the American South, adding a huge handicap to widespread African American advancement in any pretty much any industry. While the color line may have been less brutally enforced elsewhere in the United States, it remained, of course, a perniciously widespread reality in American socioeconomic life in all corners of the country. And then of course, there were financial and natural disasters that shaped the Great Depression of the 1930s. Precipitous drops in commodity prices, crushing debt, floods, dust storms, heat waves, pest plagues spelled disaster for farming communities across the United States, black or white. Finally, of critical importance:  the NFCF suffered from a serious internal weakness as well. Organized and largely led by prosperous black businessmen and professionals, the Federation was faulted for not sufficiently speaking to the realities of the land-poor tenant farmers and sharecroppers who made up the bulk of the black farming community of the rural South and who ultimately saw their interests and concerns better served by sharecropper unions and more politically engaged civil rights organizations of the 1930s.

Yet the NFCF was nothing if not energetically determined in its hope of making successful collective self-help and, eventually, a greater political voice, a reality for black farmers. For a time at least, there was good reason to gain confidence about this prospect. In September 1930 "The National Federation of Colored Farmers .... reports that 500 farmers in Holmes County, Mississippi have made the first purchase of a carload of groceries and supplies through the federation. The farmers, by wholesale buying, saved 42 percent on the cost." Later that year, promising negotiations between African American merchant associations in New York City and black farmers with melon and other fruits to sell had begun. By 1939, The Modern Farmer was able to spotlight an impressive victory on its front page:  The Special Assistant to the Administrator of the U.S. Agricultural Adjustment Act had been successfully enjoined to meet with the NFCF to address concerns about the Act’s deleterious effects on black farmers.

Mann Library has the good fortune of being able to offer the full run of The Modern Farmer as part of its special collections in historical agriculture. As far as we know, we may be the only library with this rare and important piece of African American history in its collection. But we’re also happy to say that you don't need to actually walk through the front doors of our building to get a look at this treasure.  Thanks to a recent scanning initiative, The Modern Farmer is now available for anyone with access to a computer and the internet. We invite you to take a look at archive.org. It is worth a good, long browse, for across the lively issues of its two decade run, you will get an amazing view of unflinching determination. The history of African American farmers in the United States may be one of contending with bitterly long odds—but what materials like The Modern Farmer make clear, black farmers have never been silent, passive or submissive in working to make these odds, well, unacceptable.

Sources: 

Gordon Nembhard, Jessica. Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice. The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2014.

Roll, Jarod. "The Lazarus of American Farmers": The Politics of Black Agrarianism in the Jim Crow South," in Beyond Forty Acres and a Mule: African American Landowning Families Since Reconstruction, edited by Debra A. Reid and Evan P. Bennett, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2012, pp. 132 - 154.

(Title page from "The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy", London 1758, in the special collections of Mann Library, Cornell University)

Got assigned to make the sweet potato casserole for your big family gathering of the holiday season? Need some inspiration for your weekly meal prep? Just reach onto your book shelf and pluck out your favorite cookbook. Or, in these days of the internet, google your ingredients to find an almost infinite array of matching recipes at your fingertips. But it wasn’t always this easy. In the days of early antiquity, your success would have depended on who you knew, as recipes were primarily transmitted orally. In the Middle Ages, you would have had to be among the privileged classes to get your hands on manuscripts of collected recipes. It wasn’t until the advent of the printing press and increased literacy rates that access to cookbooks was democratized. And in the unfolding story of getting good food to the people, a leading part was played by this book: The Art of Cookery, Made Plain and Easy, authored in 1747 “By a Lady.”

(Image of the frontispiece to “The Art of Cookery”, 1777 edition, from Wikimedia Commons)

It was later revealed that the author was, in fact, a lady: specifically an English dressmaker named Hannah Glasse, who helped usher in the development of modern cuisine by producing a cooking guide meant to be used by a wide swathe of an increasingly literate populace. Seminal though it was, Glasse’s cookbook could be considered “old-fashioned” in at least one sense: It included at least 200 recipes found to be plagiarized from other publications. At the dawn of Enlightenment, the culinary knowledge handed down through generations—via traditions of family life and food sharing—was still there for the taking, and Glasse apparently saw no problem in continuing the tradition of re-purposing other people’s recipes for her own enterprises.

The Art of Cookery contains hundreds of recipes, from puddings to gravies to food for the sick and hardy meals for voyaging sailors. Glasse purposefully used a conversational style of English in her book, avoiding the fancy French terminology associated with “high cuisine” at the time. Her stated aim with this approach: To ensure the book’s accessibility to people of any class. Asserts Glasse in her bold introduction, Cookery in hand, “…every Servant who can but read will be capable of making a tolerable good Cook, and those who have the least Notion of Cookery can’t miss of being very good ones.”

Over 40 editions of “The Art of Cookery” followed the original publication, and Glasse’s classic proved a popular hit beyond England as well, particularly in areas touched by British colonialism. But, in a telling example of the the back-and-forth nature of cultural exchange in a globalizing world, it didn’t take long for this seminal English cookbook to also be shaped by the foods and culinary traditions of far flung places. By 1774, a new edition of Cookery included a recipe for Indian "currey.” In 1805, an updated edition printed in Virginia, features quintessentially American ingredients such as maple sugar and pumpkin in dishes of a decidedly New World palette alongside the stoutly English fare.

(Recipe for Indian curry from the 1774 edition of “The Art of Cookery” from archive.org)

There are few records pertaining to the end of Glasse’s life, but it is known that she tragically plunged into debt over business troubles- so much so that she had to sell the copyright to her smash hit classic to make ends meet. While it isn’t known how much involvement Glasse had in later publications, The Art of Cookery continued to grow and develop as the years progressed- and came to mark an important milestone in the history of cooking: making good cooking accessible to the masses—which gives us yet another thing to be grateful for this holiday season.

References:

A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page over Seven Centuries, Henry Notaker, 2017

History of American Cooking, Merril D. Smith, 2013

The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse, 1758

time.com/5218240/google-doodle-cookbook-author-hannah-glasse/

From the great white pelican to the snowy owl — birds spread their wings and flock southward in droves in the late summer and early fall. As the bird lovers among us would likely agree, few natural sights are as breathtaking as a group of cranes flying in a V-formation or a migrating group of snow geese, or even robins, which typically migrate in groups of less than fifty but sometimes gather in groups of hundreds or thousands. For those of us lucky enough to live near migration corridors, the sight of this fall phenomenon can captivate the mind and move the soul.

Over the centuries, many naturalists have attempted to better understand avian migration. One of these was early 20th century American ornithologist and author Frank Chapman. Chapman was a self-taught ornithologist from New Jersey – he is perhaps most well known as an early promoter of the photographic blind in bird photography, and for bringing the science of ornithology to the people through the use of non-specialized language and field guides composed with the bird-loving lay person in mind. As Frank Chapman observed in his lovely 1916 volume, The Travels of Birds, the study of natural history has been replete with thoughtful theorizing about the reasons behind bird migration, some of which have been a little out there (at least in the light of what we do currently know).  Writes Chapman “At one time it was thought that some birds flew to the moon. Others, particularly the Swallows and Swifts, were believed to fly into the mud and pass the winter hibernating like frogs; while the European Cuckoo was said, in the fall, to turn into a Hawk.”

Such speculations may sound silly to us today, but the truth is, the facts of bird migration are indeed astonishing — bird populations seemingly disappear en masse overnight, make their way without a map or compass, across hundreds of thousands of miles of land and sea only to reappear every year, hale and hearty after winter’s last thaw. Thanks to insights gathered from careful scientific observation over the years, we now know that our feathered friends are able to navigate using a variety of methods such as a sun compass or olfactory cues, that migration is cued by factors like changes in day length, and that migration is driven to a significant degree by the seasonal availability of nourishment in different regions of the globe.

In Travels, Chapman takes a moment to ponder one of history’s most impressive migrants, the North American passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) whose day-flying migratory group — as observed in the early part of the 1800s at least — could reach flocks that were “a mile or more in width. Often the sun would be obscured by the clouds of flying birds." So great were the numbers of these birds in migration flight that hunters assumed the passenger pigeon would provide them with an inexhaustible supply of income — and used their rifles accordingly. Alas, passenger pigeons were hunted with such reckless abandon, and their deciduous forest habitat was sufficiently degraded during the course of the 19th century, that in less than 100 years, the death of the last known surviving passenger pigeon at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914 marked their final extinction. 

So, while Chapman's lyrical  volume about travelling birds does not fail in his goal of evoking in his readers a great (yes we'll call it soaring!) sense of wonder and appreciation about bird migration, it serves as a sobering cautionary tale as well. With brand new research by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology highlighted in Science Magazine just this month suggesting an alarming 30% decline in the general bird population of Canada and the United States since the early 1970s, it's a tale that we would be wise to take seriously to heart. 

Sources: 

wikipedia

audubon.org

From:  Fungi collected in Shropshire and other neighborhoods, by M.F. Lewis (1860-1903) in the Mann Library special collections.

It's no secret—the official history of science is a spotty narrative, flawed by frequent omission of the many contributions women have made to its advancement over the centuries. While we're now seeing considerable effort to rectify the record, the discovery of untold stories to fill in the blanks can be tricky business. It's not that the stories never happened — the field of botany, for one, is replete with some pretty spectacular evidence of women's (often unacknowledged) engagement with scientific inquiry, embodied in the detailed illustrations that captured the insights of observations from the natural world. But the published historical record is often woefully scant when it comes to closer detail on the lives and careers of the women who have helped carry modern science forward. For this month's Vaults of Mann blog — and in conjunction with a new exhibit spotlighting early women in botanical illustration that has just gone up at Mann Library — we hail a couple of  exquisite gems from our special collections in mycology that speak volumes about women’s dedication to the creation of knowledge throughout history — and about the challenges involved in finding the missing pieces for a reliably accurate accounting of the mycological herstory.

From:  Fungi collected in Shropshire and other neighborhoods, by M.F. Lewis (1860-1093)  in the Mann Library special collections.

Open even just the first few pages of Fungi collected in Shropshire and other neighborhoods by M.F. Lewis and you'll be likely be smitten by this breathtaking 3-volume inventory of mushrooms identified over more than forty years (1860-1902) in the fields, forests, hills and valleys in various counties of England's West Midlands region in  the late 19th century. Lewis' exquisite artistry is likely to persuade even the indifferent non-mushroom-enthusiasts among us about the curiously alluring beauty of this particular kingdom in life’s universe. The sheer number (over 300) and extraordinary variety of specimens included will leave you inspired by the wealth of fungi found in just one small corner of the world--a great lesson itself on the important but not always so readily visible biodiversity that can be found in our own backyards. And the care with which Lewis identifies the scientific name and place and date located for each species depicted will put you in awe of the painstaking devotion to data collection and taxonomy that this work represents.

From:  Fungi collected in Shropshire and other neighborhoods, by M.F. Lewis (1860-1093)  in the Mann Library special collections.

But who exactly was M. F. Lewis and what inspired her to produce this extraordinary study? What was her training? How did she work? And who did she work with over the four long decades that it took to complete her inventory? We may never know. Miss Lewis' work was never published—the 3 volumes in the Mann special collections appear to be a hand-bound set that includes the original watercolor drawings and field notes created by Lewis’ own hand.  It did garner one mention by the English botanist William Phillips, who, in his essay on "The Hymenomycetes of Shropshire" in an 1880 issue of the Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, observes having been "permitted to look over [a work] of very much excellence executed by Miss M. F. Lewis, of Ludlow" and notes that "several rare species [of fungi] are very artistically represented."  Aside from this single reference, however, Miss Lewis remains for us an elusive figure of mystery, a person whose (dare we call it) life's work proved her to be in possession of great talent, a keen eye, and an devoted dedication to the focused study of a fascinating subject of nature, yet who otherwise appears exceedingly difficult to find in the published record.

Clockwise from top left:  Agaricus mutabilis Agaricus Laccatus, Lentinus cochleatus, Russula heterophylla, from  Illustrations of the fungi of our fields and woods, by Sarah Price (1864-1865) 

We also have in the Mann special collections a work by another English mycologist and science illustrator, Sarah Price, who, hailing from the town of Bitterly in Shropshire county (about 4 miles from Ludlow) happened to be not only Lewis' older contemporary, but also her virtual neighbor. Illustrations of the fungi of our fields and woods (1864-1865) offers an inventory of common mushrooms that Price found making the countryside in "her own neighborhood. around Shropshire...gay in their abundance." This study is a more limited one than Lewis' work--covering a little over hundred mushroom species only — but Price did manage to formally publish it as a slim 2 volume set thanks to funding provided by paying subscribers. 

Among Price’s subscribers was William Jackson Hooker, then director of London's Royal  Gardens of Kew, to whom Price dedicated, in her modest words, "this small contribution to the literature of botany." In addition to Hooker, about another 200 or so subscribers appear on the front pages of each of Price's volumes, many a "Sir," "Lord,"  "Reverend" “Colonel,” “Esquire,” and "Mr." among them, but also, a remarkably high number of "Ladies," "Misses" and "Mrs's." While, like M.F. Lewis, Sarah Price remains virtually invisible in the published record of British mycology, a review of her subscriber list (where women — not even counting those who appear as part of a couple — make up 53% of the names represented) makes it easy to imagine the presence of a kind of vibrant sisterhood in the Midlands region of 19th century England, a network of kindred spirits and bright minds sharing a common fascination with the secrets to be found in the nooks and crannies of the world around them--along with a determination to help discover them.

Polyporus beatiei, illustrated by Mary Elizabeth Banning, from Fungi: Mary Banning, at the New York State Museum.

In some ways, the cases of Lewis and Price recall the story of another remarkable woman who also toiled tirelessly to advance what we know about fungi, only this time on this side of the Atlantic. Mary Elizabeth Banning, born sometime in the 1820s in Talbot County, Maryland, received no formal training, but her family's moderate means allowed a basic level of childhood homeschooling that included some (clearly inspiring) nature study, possibly along with some Latin. As an adult, Banning became the sole breadwinner for her mother and half-sister and experienced a steady impoverishment of means over the course of her life. However these difficulties did not keep her from years of intrepid fieldwork hunting mushrooms across the state of Maryland, taking whatever form of public transportation available to her. Banning's passion prompted her to strike up a thirty-year correspondence with the mycologist Charles Horton Peck at New York State Museum of Natural History, to whom she sent many of her specimens and with whom she identified a number of fungal taxa. (Banning also identified 5 new species entirely on her own; and Peck wisely named one of the specimens that Banning had provided to him after the collector herself, Hypomyces banningiae). Convinced of the value of nature study for children's education, Banning worked long and hard on an illustrated study of Maryland's mushrooms, which she finished but was not able to publish before she died in 1903, in ill-health and living in a worn boarding house in Baltimore. Thanks to her connection with Peck, however, both a wonderful collection of her illustrations and the correspondence that detailed the story of her careful work were saved at the New York Museum of History, where, ninety years later, their discovery led to some well-deserved public recognition at last and the honor of being named to the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame.

It can be helpful to think of Banning's now more widely known story as a kind of proxy palette for very lightly coloring in some of the yawning blanks in the very incomplete picture we have of M.F. Lewis, Sarah Price and their engagement with the study of the mushroom kingdom. We can hope that the stories of Miss Lewis and Mrs. Price will also be eventually uncovered at some point, thanks to some intrepid future sleuth, willing to comb the town archives, local libraries and historical public records of rural England.  In the meantime, we safeguard these women’s exquisite art and taxonomic work here at the Library, keeping their treasures accessible for future generations to enjoy — and to draw from as they embark on their own quests to better understand and appreciate this precious yet vulnerable planet that we call home.

Additional references:

Maroske, Sara; May, Tom W. (March 2018). "Naming names: the first women taxonomists in mycology" Studies in Mycology, Vol. 89, March 2018.

If you’re into beekeeping you likely know the name Amos Ives Root- the Ohio-born author and pioneering apiculturist who wrote “The ABC of Bee Culture” in 1879. The book in still in circulation today (although now titled “The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture: An Encyclopedia of Beekeeping”) in its 41st edition and is affectionately nicknamed “The Beekeeper’s Bible” among bee-enthusiasts. “ABC” covers everything in regard to honey-bee rearing: from building hives to honey-harvesting, beekeeping implements, pollinator-friendly plants, biographies of noted beekeepers, and how to deal with pesky bears. A true A to Z of beekeeping!

As the story goes, Amos Root’s journey into beekeeping began on a warm August day in 1865 as a swarm of bees passed over Root’s worksite. An employee of his, recalling that Root had previously mentioned a desire to keep bees, offered to catch the swarm for him. Root was soon to discover that beekeeping is not an easy task, as his first swarm of bees was to fly off and abandon him. But he was not quick to give up! After much trial and error Root had his first successful hive, and four years later, in 1869, he decided to spread his passion for bees and founded the A.I. Root Company, producers of quality beehive and beekeeping equipment. He later went on to establish the publication “Gleanings in Bee Culture” and wrote his renowned book “The ABC of Bee Culture”. Impressively, all of Root’s accomplishments are still alive in some form. His beekeeping company would later switch to candle manufacturing, but Root Candles is still in business today and is run by Root’s great-great grandson (and produces some fine beeswax candles of course!). “Gleanings in Bee Culture” is today produced in magazine and online format and now known as “Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping”. Last, but not least, of course the beekeeper’s bible “The ABC of Bee Culture”, while updated, is still a go-to for the modern beekeeper.

It was the efforts of early pioneers and inventors like Amos Root that laid the foundation for the modern beekeeping industry. Much has changed since Amos Roth’s time, but while the pollinators we rely on to produce over 75% of our food crop are in crisis and declining rapidly, we will need to summon that same gusto and tenacity as the early apiculture pioneers to help ensure their recovery and future health. Apiculturists like Amos Ives Root seemed to truly recognize the beauty of our pollinators and their supreme importance to all life. That isn’t a lesson we should be quick to forget!

References:

“ABC of Bee Culture”, Amos Ives Root, 1891

beeculture.com

With the intense winter cold of the Finger Lakes and a yarn-bomb challenge we have going here at Mann Library, this last week of January has us on to a cozy topic—needlework and knitting. Whether as artisanal craft, high fashion design, or work of art, knitted creations have been the object of intense human focus and activity across time and culture. The earliest piece of true knitwear ever found—a knitted sock—dates from about 4th century Egypt, while ancient Mongolians were also known to have created knitted vests with abstract floral motifs to help ward off the bitter Central Asian winter cold.  Distinctive knitting traditions developed in other corners of the globe following those early Near Eastern origins. Over the years—thanks to the work of artisans, fiber artists, designers and cultural historians—these traditions survived the process of industrial revolution to remain a solid, even resurgent part of culture today.  

J. A Fleming’s How to Teach Needlework in Schools, published in 1887 by George Gill & Sons publishers of London, is a charming introduction to all types of needlework: from crochet to embroidery to knitting. It features lovely illustrations so the reader can easily follow along, like this one that shows the reader how to complete an exercise that will help them learn how to “cast on.”  

For those of us new to the needle arts, in knitting, “casting on” is the process of getting the first loops, or row of stitches, on to the needle. Adversely, “casting off” is the act of finishing your last row of stitches so that your piece doesn’t unravel. Jane A. Fleming was an active English educator in her day, with a particular focus on promoting skills in sewing, knitting, and mending.  In addition to authoring books such as How to Teach Needlework and Common-Sense Needlework, she contributed to the The Practical Educator, a  British late 19th century monthly journal of advice and lesson material for teachers. We heartily recommend a browse through Fleming’s  writings for a look at some beautifully clear and helpful guidance in some remarkably timeless (or, given today’s growing “maker” movement, perhaps better said, delightfully timely) life skills. Thank you Miss Jane!

December 12th is Poinsettia Day! And so we celebrate the “Christmas Star” (as it’s commonly known) with an image from volume 85 of Revue Horticole. Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) were introduced to the United States from Mexico in 1825 by Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first Ambassador to Mexico. Upon returning to the United States, Poinsett sent clippings of the plant to friends and botanists. In the early 1900’s a family of German immigrants, the Eckes, began producing poinsettias on a mass scale and selling them as Christmas decorations. The Ecke family were genius advertisers, incorporating the plants into magazine fashion shoots and giving them away to TV show hosts to get the plant in the public eye. Another fun fact about the poinsettia: The colored parts (the non-green ones that is) aren’t flower petals but bracts (or modified leaves). Deep red is the classically popular color for poinsettias, but they also come in pink and cream — as in this beautiful illustration from 1913 — as well as burgundy, and even marbled.

Revue Horticole was a French journal edited by the Société Nationale d'Horticulture de France, featuring botanical descriptions and gorgeous full color chromolithographs. This particular image was originally painted by the French painter Adolphe Millot and printed by the lithographer J. L. Goffart of Brussels.

A quick lesson on the chromolithography printing process: These words at the bottom of the image tell the story. “pinxit” (Latin for “he/she painted”) credits the artist who made the original painting while “lith” (lithographer) signifies the printmaker who reproduces and prints the image we see in the book.

A lithograph is created by an image drawn onto a smooth stone, which is then inked and printed on paper. A chromolithograph is a multi-layered colored lithograph, using many stones depending on the level of detail the printer wants. Chromolithography emerged in order to reproduce oil paintings in publications in mass quantities. When chromolithographs came onto the market they were referred to as “the democracy of art” because the medium was capable of a high quality reproduction for a low price. Although the quality of chromolithographs could vary, for those printers interested in high quality reproductions, it was possible to produce some stunningly gorgeous prints, such as this very poinsettia illustration!

Additional sources:

apsnet.org/publications/apsnetfeatures/pages/poinsettiaflower.aspx

The Ecke Poinsettia Manual, Paul Ecke, 2004

knoxhort.com/wp-content/uploads/Documents/Poinsettia-History.pdf

From: Bacteria: The Smallest of Living Organisms, by Dr. Ferdinand Cohn. Translated by Charles S. Dolley. Rochester, N.Y.: 1881 (from the special collections of Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University)

Antibiotics Awareness week celebrated in November reminds us that it’s hard to imagine a world before antibiotics. The early 20th century discovery of the “magic bullet” rocked the medical world and turned once deadly infections into a quick trip to the doctor’s office. The problem now is that diseases once effectively treated with antibiotics are mutating and returning even stronger. It turns out the magic bullet can be over-prescribed and overused, and overuse causes resistance and stronger bacteria. At a time when dangerous super-bacteria are drawing increasing attention of the world’s microbiologists, we turn our special collections spotlight to some key foundational work for the field of bacteriology done by a 19th century German scientist. 

Image reproduced from: "Bacteria: The Smallest of Living Organisms," translated by Charles S. Dolley, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, January 1939, via jstor.org (https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/44440427.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3A4129cd9688644f0c8cbfcf67fb8c40a9) 

Ferdinand Cohn was a botanist who earned himself lasting fame with the  essays on bacteria that he first began publishing the early 1870s in Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen, a journal he had just launched as professor and director of the Institute of Plant Physiology at the University of Breslau (now known as the University of Wrocław in Wroclaw, Poland.)  Cohn's most widely acclaimed essay "Über Bacterien, die kleinsten der lebenden Wesen"  was also published in 1876 as part of a German series of popular science lectures, where it caught the eye of American medical student Charles S. Dolley at the University of Pennsylvania, who hoped to help make the "best writings in medicine and science" from the German and French medical literature more widely available to aspiring young American scientists-in-training. Dolley's translation, "Bacteria: The Smallest of Living Organisms,"  first appeared as a limited edition pamphlet published in Rochester, N.Y. in 1881, and was later picked up by the Johns Hopkins University Press in the Bulletin of the History of Medicine (January 1939).

Pamphlet from the special collections of Albert R. Mann Library, Cornell University

Don't let the size — 31 pages — of this slim publication fool you, for it summarizes profoundly important insights that the botanist had achieved in his study of algal, bacterial, and fungal microorganisms. With his work, Cohn established a robust definition of bacteria as chlorophyll-free cells that could be classified into four basic morphological forms — cocci, bacilli, vibrios and spirilli (see the illustration at the beginning of this blog for the visuals he provided along with that classification). He gave decisive intellectual weight to an understanding of bacteria as form-constant species in their own right, rather than organisms that evolve into something else. And Cohn recognized for the first time that some bacteria can undergo a spore stage—a stage in which otherwise actively reproducing bacteria cells assume a dormant form that allows them to survive exposure to unfavorable physical (e.g. high heat) or chemical (e.g. antiseptic agents) environments .

It's hard to overstate the importance of Cohn's analysis for the major breakthroughs in bacteriology that ensued. By the mid-1870’s Cohn’s ingenious work had attracted the attention of a young country physician, Robert Koch, whose research on anthrax was quietly laying the groundwork for modern medicine's understanding of bacteria as causative agents of infection. Cohn became a key supporter of Koch’s research, publishing Koch's seminal paper about bacillus anthracis in his Beiträge journal series in 1876, and also collaborating with him in some further studies. The rest is glorious science history, as the insights achieved by both scientists proved fundamental to all the later work establishing effective ways to treat bacterial infections, including of course Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in the late 1920’s. 

From: Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen, vol. 2, no. 1, 1876. This seminal paper by Robert Koch, published in Ferdinand Cohn’s botany journal, established the causal relationship between bacillus anthracis and anthrax infection. 

As microbiologists of today turn their attention to the problem of increasingly antibiotic-resistant super-bugs, it’s easy to imagine their intellectual forbears, the Cohns, Kochs, Flemings and the other greats of modern bacteriology, cheering them on — with no small sense of urgency — in their important work on behalf of global health. We might also do well to imagine these giants of science history reminding us that the global public has its own role to play in understanding how bacteria work and what steps we can take in our own habits and industry practices to hold the line against growing antibiotic resistance. For further thoughts on that, be sure to check out the info pages by the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. 

Additional references: 

Drews, Gerhart, "The roots of microbiology and the influence of Ferdinand Cohn on microbiology of the 19th century," FEMS Microbiology Reviews, Volume 24, Issue 3, 1 July 2000, Pages 225–249, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2000.tb00540.x

“Ferdinand Cohn, German Botanist,” Encyclopaedia Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-Cohn

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