The History of Cell Respiration and Cytochrome

THE HISTORY OF CELL REsPIRATION AND CYTOCHROME. By David Keilin. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1966. xix, 416 pp. $17.50. It is a rare and happy occasion when a man who was the father of a field of knowledge, now burgeoned into a vast and complicated literature, can lead us gently and logically along its paths of growth. In 1925 David Keilin, then known as a parasitologist, published a paper with the title, "On cytochrome, a respiratory pigment, common to animals, yeast, and higher plants." Thereby hangs a tale and, indeed, this book. There are two major aspects to this volume, and only the individual reader will be able to say which is the more interesting. One is a lucid exposition of views on and knowledge of cell respiration from Galen and Harvey, Lavoisier and Pasteur, to the now classic but then misunderstood work of MacMunn, and from Keilin's own early work through to the comparatively recent discoveries of the properties and structure of cytochromes. The second aspect, which lends to this work a rare charm and interest, is that it is an intensely personal history. Keilin was interested not only in science but in the whys and hows of patterns of scientific discovery. Why did a now classic experiment happen to be performed in that particularly felicitous fashion? Why was MacMunn's work ignored for so long, and how did his enemies try to discredit it? I hope that it will not be taken as impertinent if I say that in many ways this book resembles a true adventure story; there is a constant battle between the good and bad guys (and the demarcation lines are quite clearly drawn). The good guys always win, but the victory, as in MacMunn's case, may be a posthumous one. Keilin writes, without arrogance but with a terrifying honesty, of the shameful and often underhanded ways by which new ideas were fought and dying theories preserved by their creators. He recites with the same clarity the story of the feud between himself and Warburg, and the treatment that Pasteur received from Leibig and Berthelot. The writing is clear and quiet. I can think of no better way of demonstrating this than by quoting the paragraph in which Keilin tells of the discovery of the respiratory function of cytochrome: