Microbiology in fable and art.

Modem science prides itself in being concerned only with the rational and the useful; it mistrusts the uncontrolled imagination and is disdainful of the fairy tales in which our ancestors rejoiced. This haughty attitude, however, is of recent date. In its youth, science expressed itself in art and poetry and knew the intoxication of magic. Only after it had reached adulthood and had to pay the penalty of its social influence did it begin to shun glamor and suffer from inhibitions. If you will permit me, I shall try this evening to liberate myself from these inhibitions, to recover some of the naivet6 of the past. When the modem scientist tires of his austere textbooks and professional articles, he can, if he wishes, seek relief and entertainment in the many strange tales found in the early annals of all fields of scientific endeavor. The astronomer can discover romance in the fanciful and poetical cosmogony of the ancients, the chemist in the weird imaginings of alchemy, the zoologist and botanist in the legendary creatures which enliven the lore of all people and give such festive and mysterious atmosphere to medieval books and tapestries. Furthermore, these quaint documents often yield facts of scientific value. The star which guided the wise men to Bethlehem, the prehistoric drawings of animals now extinct, the list of plants and flowers in the old herbals and in Shakespeare; all have found some place in the fabric of modem science. Alone of biological sciences, microbiology appears at first sight to be without a remote and fanciful past. Its founder, Leeuwenhoek, was an acute, industrious and factual-but unromantic-bourgeois. For a century after him, microbiologists continued to work earnestly on problems of description and classification. Then Pasteur and Koch taught them to harness their skill and energy to the practical affairs of mankind in an effort to make their profession respected in the scientific community. The most diligent search discloses nothing but businesslike statements in the microbiological literature of Europe and America. It is true that a few years ago Dr. Paul Clark was bold enough to take advantage of his presidential address to give before our Society an essay entitled "Alice in Virusland", which he adorned with nonsense verses and delightful cartoons. But probably as a form of atonement, the Society of American Bacteriologists exacted a fine of one dollar of those of its members so frivolous as to wish to own a copy of this nontechnical document. I shall not be as bold as Dr. Clark, nor do I have his skill as a versifier. I shall try, nevertheless, to show you that the lore of primitive civilizations, the poems, novels, drama and arts of all times yield much material that microbiology can legitimately claim as belonging to its past. These traces of the