In Search of the Animalcule

Steven L. Berk M.D.

Description

In this remarkable story, an orphan and a small group of scientists make world-changing nineteenth-century discoveries that identify the cause of global death and disease.
When he is born in 1847 Vienna, Jacob Pfleger shares just two days with his mother, a female obstetrician who dies, like thousands of other women around the world, of the mysterious childbed fever. Because his birth father wants nothing to do with him, Jacob is placed in an orphanage. His mother’s dying wish is that he will grow up with resilience and independence.
As Jacob matures into a precocious twelve-year-old, he is told about the legacy of his mother by her colleague, Ignaz Semmelweis, and learns that his father is a winemaker in Lille, France. Determined to find his father and his destiny, Jacob embarks on a quest to locate him. When he arrives in France, Jacob is introduced to Louis Pasteur who is working with is father to determine why the wines of France are spoiling. As he is led on an intense scientific journey, Jacob eventually also works with Joseph Lister and Robert Koch, participating in the great discoveries of the era that uncover the animalcules, the bacteria, that have caused global disease and death. Later Jacob studies to become a doctor under the mentorship of Sir William Osler at Johns Hopkins.
In this amazing story that captures the real lives and work of the great scientists of the time, an orphan assists in shocking discoveries that change the worlds understanding of disease and uncovers the field of infectious disease.

Sujets

• Historical
• Puerperal fever
• Historical fiction
• Infectious disease
• Joseph Lister
• William Osler
• Robert Koch
• Fiction
• Louis Pasteur

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 08 décembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663247995
• Langue: English

Extrait

IN SEARCH OF THE ANIMALCULE




Steven L. Berk, M.D.







IN SEARCHOF THEANIMALCULE


Copyright © 2023 Steven L. Berk, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.




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ISBN: 978-1-6632-4800-8 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4801-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4799-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022921645



iUniverse rev. date: 12/01/2022



As for the animalcules, it is a terrifying thought that life is at the mercy of these minute bodies. It is consoling that Science will not be powerless before such enemies.
—Louis Pasteur



CONTENTS
1. Death In Vienna
2. A Revelation And Promise Kept
3. The Vienna Foundlings
4. The Vienna Medical School
5. Leaving The Vienna Foundlings
6. Death Of Paul
7. Finding The Vineyard And My Father
8. Luc Lavigne
9. Louis Pasteur And Fate
10. The Pasteur Laboratory
11. The Spoiled Wine Of Lille
12. Pasteurization
13. Finding The Source Of Animalcules
14. Saving The Lille Wine Industry
15. Meeting Napoleon
16. Saving The Silkworms
17. Letter From Lister
18. Adrienne And Glasgow
19. The Glasgow Surgeons
20. In The Surgical Suite
21. The Success Of Carbolic Acid
22. The Queen
23. Scotland To Wollstein
24. Finding My Animalcule Soulmate
25. Anthrax
26. The New Era Of Infectious Diseases
27. Potatoes, Cameras, And A Special Visit
28. The Dream
29. Consumption
30. Egypt
31. Lost In Paris
32. Philadelphia
33. Johns Hopkins
34. Celebrating Pasteur
35. Return To Vienna
36. With Lazear And Carroll
37. Death In Cuba

Obituary
Afterword
Dedication
About The Author



1
DEATH IN VIENNA
I do not remember my mother, as we shared only two days on earth together. But one might say that my birth and her death set in place events that would change the world forever. The death of my mother would disclose a horrible secret and change the lives of men, women, and children over the coming centuries. And I, an orphan of little means, would be the catalyst for a revelation so great that no individual from any land would be unaffected. My name is Jacob Pfleger, and I was there to see the greatest breakthroughs in science and medicine ever known. My story begins with what happened to my mother and dozens of other women of her time. This is what I have been told.
My mother knew, within hours after my birth, that she was ill. And by dawn the next morning, after a restless sleep and the onset of feverishness and chills, she knew that she would be dead within days. My mother was no stranger to postpartum fever, for she was an obstetrician, one of the very few women obstetricians in Europe.
Death was no stranger to my mother, not in Vienna and not in the wards of the large, gratis Viennese maternity hospital Allgemeines Krankenhaus. But my mother, Theresa Marie Pfleger, vowed that she would not die with her secret, a dark, troubling secret that she shared with only a few of her male colleagues in this Vienna hospital in March 1847.
My mother’s nurse, a coworker named Hannah Mandel, was also a close friend. Hannah held her in great esteem in a culture of chauvinism. So when Theresa Marie asked to have her mentor, teacher, and friend Professor Jakob Kolletschka summoned to her bedside, her nurse made every effort to oblige.
Kolletschka had always guided my mother, encouraging her through medical school, protecting her from the male-dominated hierarchy of academic medicine, and forewarning her of the Habsburg Empire’s window of opportunity in education and science. Kolletschka was known by the entire physician community as a distinguished forensic pathologist, the one who would conduct the autopsy and have the answer to why any patient had died. Kolletschka had become a sharer of the secret.
Hannah found it impossible to find or contact Kolletschka. Appearing at my mother’s bedside instead was Josef Skoda, a colleague and sharer of the secret. Skoda, with his long, straight brown hair, spectacles, green bow tie, and brown three-piece suit, his jacket close to touching the white hospital floor, looked down upon her with shame. The founder of the Vienna Medical School and a brilliant professor who gave his lectures in Latin, he was intelligent enough to be a sharer of the secret but not the man who would battle the status quo. His colorful clothing pierced the room’s sea of white—the white wooden walls of the hospital, the white uniforms, and the white hooded caps of the nurses. Today my mother’s pale skin appeared whiter than ever. She ignored the sounds of nearby women crying out in the midst of labor, ignored the vague smell of urine—all just part of a public hospital.
She grimaced when she saw Josef. Josef Skoda was a good and kind man, an accomplished professor and obstetrician. But he was a man of science and a man of few words, more comfortable writing than speaking, perhaps not the right man to be at the deathbed of an esteemed colleague.
“Josef, I asked for Jakob, not you.”
“Theresa Marie, I must suffice. But Division One! That was not the plan. That was not the ward you were to be assigned to. Absurd. How could you have the delivery in Division One and by Dr. Braun of all choices—you, who first noted the dangers of Division One? Dr. Braun, who frequently shuttles between the delivery ward and the autopsy room, has completely rejected our concerns about these deliveries.”
“Foolish Josef, I had no choice—it was Saturday. Your anger directed at me is just the frustration that we all share. My midwife had promised to be available when the time came, but I was two weeks early, and she was in Budapest. You and Ignaz—perhaps I should have tried to find you. But Dr. Braun is who they called. He smiled and told me that he had not been in the laboratory. I was in pain, and of course, I was frightened—my first baby. So I did not argue with fate’s choice of my obstetrician. And my civility, perhaps, will become my fatal mistake. But I must speak with Kolletschka.”
And then she knew, for Josef Skoda also was the protégé of Jakob Kolletschka. Josef was not a man of emotion or great sensitivity, so when Theresa Marie saw a tear in the eye of this man of science, a man who had witnessed the deaths of newborns and mothers without expression, she knew that another tragedy was upon her.
Josef did not need to answer, for while he was carefully, slowly, and awkwardly choosing his words, the other members of the team—obstetricians, fellow faculty, the other holders of Vienna’s deadly secret—also arrived at the bedside of my dying mother. With curtains drawn and small wooden guest chairs arranged around the cement slab of my mother’s bed, Josef Skoda and the two new arrivals—other members of the obstetrics team, Ferdinand von Hebra and Ignaz Semmelweis—stared at my mother with a grief too extraordinary for words. But none of them could adequately capture the pathos of the moment.
Hebra hugged my mother and kissed her hand. He was a young man, no older than she was. Of the three at the bedside, he was the most articulate, emotional, and potentially persuasive. “Theresa Marie, it’s a blessing that you have a healthy son, but that you are ill is heartbreaking.” He began to sob for the inevitable and ironic fate of my mother.
Josef looked at Semmelweis and Hebra. “She has asked about Kolletschka.”
Theresa Marie already knew by then that he must be dead.
“Our cherished friend, our mentor—suddenly, tragically,” whispered Semmelweis. He spoke in a Hungarian dialect, identifying himself as an outsider. He hid behind a large, thick black mustache turned upward at each end and had large eyes and black hair that was prematurely balding. He wore a sad look.
Ignaz Semmelweis had been born to a Hungarian family of limited means, his father a grocer, and in Vienna his dialect was a source of amusement. A man of genius but with limited interpersonal skills, he looked at my mother with a sense of guilt, despair, and anger but also resolve. For five years Semmelweis had been a colleague of my mother’s, hired to be a hospital obstetrician by the more senior Skoda. He soon had developed a reputation as a Hungarian “liberal” with radical views on science and medicine. But he had been appointed chief of obstetrics, and the outcomes of the women in all the wards were thus his responsibility.
“Marie, Kolletschka cut his finger during an a