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Magazine
Issue 5, 2005
by Suzanne White Junod, Ph.D.
"The germ theory seems to have boosted cleanliness into first place, with
godliness pretty much distanced."
(Puck, vol. 69, no. 1534, July 25, 1906)
Government Chemist Wiley is reported as saying: "I have found that
the foods we daily consume are so fraught with germ life of a harmful nature
that I am almost afraid to go to the table."
(Puck, vol 59, no. 1521,
April 25, 1906)
Disregard my advice if you dare
And your
daring you're certain to rue;
You must sterilize all that you wear
Or look
at, or taste of, or chew.
The Bacillus don't stop to ask "Why?"
And the
deadly Spirillum is coiled.
Micrococci are hanging around too.
So water
must always be boiled!
From: A Bacteriological Ballade (Puck, vol. 46, no.
1184, November 15, 1899)
"Some genius will tell the world how to utilize the microbe," prophesized the editors of Puck, in 1908.[1] Had they already forgotten the enduring and pervasive influence of the man dubbed the "White Knight of Science," Louis Pasteur? Pasteur, who had died less than a decade earlier in 1895, had revolutionized both the food industry and the drug industry around the globe. From the practical commercial improvements in beer, wine, and milk made possible by his fermentation studies to his studies of anthrax and the germ theory making immunization against deadly diseases including rabies both possible and increasingly practical, Pasteur's influence upon both the food supply and the practice of medicine by the turn of the twentieth century was both revolutionary and pervasive.
It was in the United States, however, that Pasteur's earliest microbiological discoveries on wine, beer, and milk, were eagerly embraced, almost from their inception.[2] His methods of manufacturing and preserving beer and wine received American patents, and his treatment for rabies that saved four children in the "Newark[Delaware] Dog Scare of 1885" won him the adoration of the American public. Rene Dubos, author of Pasteur and Modern Science, lists over thirty major modern food and drug corporations which directly benefited from Pasteur's legacy including General Foods, Johnson & Johnson, etc.[3]
Pasteur's insights lay at the heart of the revolution in the American food supply which began in the late 19th century and was largely completed by 1917. These were the peak years of American immigration -- up to the first World War. It was Pasteur's insight into food spoilage, coupled with Progressive era political reforms, including passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, which were seized upon by American businessmen for the sustenance of the expanding urban population during these years. Likewise, immunization, and pasteurized milk also had a tremendous effect upon the health of the urban population centers in the U.S. as a healthy populace became an increasingly productive populace.
Microbes and immunization were two of the most popular subjects in Puck around the turn of the century. Once again, bad jokes and bad doggerel on the subject of microbes was abundant, but whereas adulterated foods, pervasive advertising, and patent medicines were portrayed in Puck as objects of scorn, Pasteur's influence (whether acknowledged or not), even when portrayed humorously, was treated with a respect rarely evident in the magazine's treatment of other public issues of the day.
There's germ life
in the milk we drink,
And also
in the food we eat;
And what do vegetarians think
Of eating
microbes with their wheat?
They're plastered thick on every fruit,
And floating
in the air to boot.
There's bold bacilli in the cake,
And macrococci
in the cheese;
There's others in the pies we make
And in
the butter, if you please.
For water pure naught will suffice
Unless
we take and boil the ice.
Milk is the stuff they like the most,
Unless,
perhaps, we count the bread;
They flourish in our tea and toast--
The marvel
is we're not all dead.
And yet our forebears ate, 'tis clear,--
I truly
wonder how we're here!
(Puck, vol 59, no. 1521, April 25, 1906)
Oh, give me back the good old days;
I want the simple life,
The care-free times before we knew,
bacteria were rife.
We never boiled the crystal stream,
The oaken bucket drew
And if our mud pies reeked with germs,
At least
we never knew.
But now we boil, and bake, and steam,
And disinfect
and burn;
We wash and spray and shake and stir
And fume
and scrape and churn.
We think it will prolong our days
No nook
or cranny shirk,
And just as every microbe flees,
We die
of overwork.
(Puck, vol. 57, no. 1466, April 5, 1905)
First Microbe: Doing any execution these days?
Second Microbe: No; darn it. Everybody's on to me;--the doctors
spotted me and put my picture in the yellow papers.[4]
(Puck, vol. 47, no. 1197, February 14, 1900)
This Puck frontispiece refers to the aftermath of the presidential election
of 1885 in which Senator James G. Blaine lost to Grover Cleveland. The loss
came as a result of defections from the reform element of the Republican
party including George W. Curtis of Harper's magazine, Carl Schurz, and E.
L. Godkin of the New York Nation. These men were the original "mugwumps,"
-- unreliable Republicans colorfully described as having had their "mugs"
on one side of the fence and their "wumps" on the other during
the election. The leading Mugwumps are taking a steamer to Paris so that
Pasteur can treat them for the "madness" of the 1885 presidential
race.
(Puck, vol 18, no. 458, Dec. 16, 1885)
Fanciful images of immunization being employed as a preventative
treatment for another American cultural malady -- bank corruption. Gerald
Geison, a renowned Pasteur scholar at Princeton, has concluded that "few
scientists indeed, have so captured the public imagination, and fewer still
have had such a dramatic effect on everyday life."
(Gerald L. Geison, The
Private Science of Louis Pasteur -- Princeton, Princeton University Press,
1995, p. 266)
Concerns about quackery invading the microbial realm proved more illusory
than real, although by 1900, over 18 serious microbial pathogens had been
correctly identified including anthrax, cholera, tetanus, plague, salmonella
enteritidis, dystentery, botulism, typhoid fever and pneumonia.
(Print courtesy of William Helfand)
Illustration of a fat gentleman sleeping in a pullman car
while creatures representing microbes dance on his stomach.
Caption: "Outside of a laboratory, it would be difficult to find
a more congenial home and breeding place for microbes than the modern upholstered
sleeping car." Dr. Wiley of the Department of Agriculture.
This cartoon shows a gentleman coming into a restaurant and sitting down to dine. When his entree is produced, he examines it with a magnifying glass and sees a frightening creature that proclaims "I am a Germ." the gentleman runs in terror. The caption reads "Poor soul. He can't enjoy anything while he carries that magnifying glass." This popular perception of microbes everywhere constituting a threat to all types and manners of food is still being published as late as 1912.
Protests against temperance measures frequently relied on the argument that alcohol was a medicine. The reference probably is a well-known (to Puck readers at least) temperance measure that was going to take effect on May 1 and somehow affect access to alcohol or alcoholic medicines.
Tourist: "I suppose since Hurricane Bill died this community has lived
in an atmosphere of utter security?"
Sheriff: "Not a bit, stranger!
Hurricane Bill wuz no sooner dead and buried than the fools begun worryin'
about microbes."
This regional quip highlights Western threats to public
health. Old threats stemming from the lawlessness of the old frontier had
given way to concerns about the new microbial threats.
[1] 63 Puck, no. 1633 (June 17, 1908)
[2] Pasteur himself had been elated and a bit surprised to learn that California wine growers, themselves relative newcomers to the wine making business, had professed such faith in his earliest pasteurization experiments that they immediately subjected 100,000 litres of their wine to the heat preservation techniques he pioneered for the french winemakers. (Dubos, p. 60). And by the turn of the century, the American philanthropist Nathan Straus had already become a strong promoter of milk pasteurization in New York City, pasteurizing milk in his New York dairy and distributing it in public milk stations throughout the city (Dubos, p. 64).
[3] Id. at 70. The complete list of companies with microbiological and biotechnological interests, sales in billions, and areas of major interest follows: Exxon, $88, oil, chemicals; Mobil, $55, oil; duPont, $35, chemicals; Std. Oil Indiana, $28, oil, chemicals; Shell, $19.7, oil, chemicals; Phillips Petroleum, $15.2, oil, chemicals; Proctor and Gamble, $12.4, consumer products, foods; Down Chemical, $11, chemicals, agriculture; Allied Corp., $10.3, conglomerate; Beatrice Foods, $9.0, foods, consumer products; General Foods, $8.0, foods; PepsiCo, $7.8, beverages; 3-M, $7.0, chemicals, minerals; Coca-Cola, $6.9, beverages; Consolidated Foods, $6.5, foods; Monsanto, $6.3, chemicals, agriculture; W.R. Grace, $6.2, fertilizers, chemicals, agriculture; Anheuser-Busch, $6.0, brewing; Nabisco Brands, $5.9, foods; Johnson and Johnson, $5.9, healthcare; General Mills, $5.5, foods; [4]Ralston Purina, $4.9, foods; Colgate-Palmolive, $4.9, consumer products; Archer-Daniels-Midland, $4.3, chemicals, high-fructose syrup; Border, $4.3, foods; CPC International, $4.0, chemicals, foods; Bristol-Mysers, $3.9, pharmaceuticals; Pfizer, $3.7, pharmaceuticals, chemicals; H.J. Heinz, $4.7, foods; Pillsbury, $3.7, foods; American Cyanamid, $3.5, pharmaceuticals; SmithKline Beckman, $3.1, pharmaceuticals; Warner-Lambert, $3.1, pharmaceuticals; Eli Lilly, $3.0, pharmaceuticals; Abbott Laboratories, $2.9, pharmaceuticals; National Distillers, $2.3, alcoholic beverages; Upjohn, $1.9, pharmaceuticals; Rohm and Haas, $1.9, chemicals, agriculture; Baxter Travenol, $1.8, pharmaceuticals; Schering-Plough, $1.8, pharmaceuticals; Squibb, $1.8, pharmaceuticals. Id. at 71.
[4]"Yellow" refers to the so-called "yellow journalism" of the day whose aim was to attract readers by distorting or exaggerating the truth. In this context, it probably refers to the papers run by William Randolph Hearst. (47 Puck no. 1197, Feb. 14, 1900)