HISTORICAL HIGHLIGHT
In the Beginning,
There Were Microbes
The Department of Microbiology & Immunology currently occupies 36,000 square feet on four floors of the Hammer Health Sciences Center at Columbia University Medical Center, with faculty occupying additional space in the Russ Berrie Medical Science Pavilion, Black Building and Irving Comprehensive Research Center. Yet, the historical origins of the department can be traced to a corner of a single, poorly lit pathology laboratory, located between a harness shop and an ice cream parlor.
The foundation and early history of the department of Microbiology & Immunology
In 1876, the Association of Alumni of the College of Physicians and Surgeons proposed funding an Alumni Laboratory in which original research related to pathology could be performed. The Laboratory of the Alumni Association was established in 1878 on the ground floor of a College owned building at 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue. Francis Delafield, a pathologist, was appointed the director. As Director of the Alumni Laboratory, Delafield drew no salary, and actually contributed over $2,000, a significant sum in those days, towards the running of the laboratory. The Alumni Association paid for all the equipment and expenses, and in addition had to pay the Faculty of Medicine an additional $750 a year in rent ($15,000 annually, adjusted for inflation).
Shortly after the founding of the Alumni Laboratory, Delafield hired Theophil Mitchell Prudden, a young doctor from Yale, as an Assistant in Pathology. Prudden had a strong interest in not only pathology, but in establishing a scientific understanding of disease, which would have a critical impact on the research of the Alumni Laboratory. In 1882, Delafield was appointed a Professor in Pathology, and Prudden replaced him as Director of the Alumni Laboratory. The timing was fortuitous. Prudden’s interests in developing a scientific understanding of disease coincided with a rising interest in bacteriology and awareness of the germ theory of disease among not only scientists, but the general public, based on Robert Koch’s pioneering research in Germany. In 1873, the mathematician and chemist Frederick A.P. Barnard, President of Columbia College, lectured at the American Public Health Association on “The Germ Theory of Disease and Its Significance to Hygiene”. A number of such lectures led to an increased awareness of bacteriology among the general public, inspiring Mark Twain to begin writing a story in 1897 called “The General and the Cholera Microbes,” in which he wrote: “The globe is a living creature, and the little stinking human race and the other animals are the vermin that infest it – the microbes.”
Under Prudden’s leadership, research in the Alumni Laboratory began to focus on bacteriology, and in 1883, he published the College’s first original research in the field, a Medical Record paper titled “Occurrence of the Bacillius Tuberculosis in Tuberculous Lesions”. Delafield and Prudden worked to establish a standard curriculum of pathology electives, initially meant for medical graduates, but soon became recommended for undergraduates. One of the major limitations facing the Alumni Laboratory and the bacteriological research done there was the awkward setting of the laboratory, memorably described by Prudden as:
It was a narrow store on the ground floor, on Fourth Avenue, with a scanty strip of sky just visible through an iron grating, and with scarcely a feature adapting it to the needs of a microscopic laboratory, save that its walls kept out the wind and rain. An ice-cream store on one side and a harness shop on the other; the clatter of wagons and horse-cars and pedestrians sweeping endlessly along the street in front; the small boy peering curiously between the iron bars of the windows at the strange performances within, linked science to the busy world in a fashion truly cosmopolitan. The great brewery wagons rumbling heavily along the pavement set every microscope a-tremble; and the frequency with which microscopic observation must for this reason be suspended, while a severe strain upon the temper of the devotee to science, often left him free to muse upon the important role which beer plays in modern metropolitan life.
Just then the significant announcement of the importance of bacteria in the causation of infectious disease began to stir the medical world; and a small corner of the dark and crowded room was partitioned off with second-hand glass sashes – the wreckage of a livery stable – and devoted to bacteriology. So small was this apartment that the worker standing at his table with its twilight illumination could touch the walls in all directions, while at frequent intervals he must beat a hasty retreat for a breath of fresh air, lest he risk the ministrations of the coroner.
– T. Mitchell Prudden, “Pathology and the Department of Pathology” Columbia University Bulletin, March 1898.
In 1886, in part thanks to contributions by the Vanderbilt family, the College of Physicians and Surgeons moved to 59th Street and Tenth Avenue. The Alumni Laboratory moved with the College, into far more spacious quarters, with laboratories dedicated to instruction and a large general laboratory dedicated to bacteriology. In 1892, the College of Physicians and Surgeons formally merged with Columbia University, and the Alumni Laboratory became part of the Department of Pathology. A Faculty of Pure Science was also established, and Prudden was appointed a Professor of Pathology. In 1894, the Alumni Laboratory electives developed by Delafield and Prudden became required for obtaining a medical degree. The Department of Pathology rapidly expanded, eventually occupying 21,000 square feet on two floors.
Research in bacteriology continued to be heavily emphasized, and the department established a doctoral program to recommend students for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Pure Science. The first of these doctorates was awarded was to Harrison G. Dyar in 1895, for his dissertation on airborne bacteria in New York City. The subsequent doctorates awarded to members of the department continued to focus heavily on bacteriology and sanitary issues. Most of the research published by the department focused on bacteriology, including work on diphtheria, gonococcus, tuberculosis, and the sterilization of milk and water supplies. Over the next decade, the department actively recruited faculty interested in bacteriology, including Philip Hiss, who studied enteric bacteria, A.B. Wadsworth, who studied penumococcus and Hans Zinnser, who studied anerobic bacteria. The new faculty often collaborated, with Hiss and Wadsworth developing tests to differentiate streptococcus and pneumococcus, and Hiss and Zinsser studying the therapeutic properties of leucocytic extracts and cowriting “The Textbook of Bacteriology”, which became the standard in the field.
In 1907, the Department of Pathology formally recognized the focus on research in bacteriology within the department that had begun in the Alumni Laboratory, and the department split into the Department of Pathology and the Department of Bacteriology & Hygiene. The new Chair of Bacteriology & Hygiene was Philip Hiss, at the time a Professor of Pathology. The Department of Bacteriology & Hygiene continued teaching medical and graduate students and performing research in bacteriology, but under the auspices of Hiss and Zinsser, research in immunology began to flourish. Zinsser moved to Stanford University in 1910 and become the Chair of Bacteriology there, where he began to work on his textbook “Infection and Resistance” (later “Immunity”), which became the standard textbook of immunology. In 1912, the department was renamed the Department of Bacteriology, and in 1913, after the death of Philip Hiss, Hans Zinsser returned as Chair of the Department of Bacteriology.
The department has seen many changes since, including a move in 1928 to new quarters at the medical center at 168th Street and Fort Washington Avenue, a change in name and focus to the Department of Microbiology in 1952 under Chair Harry M. Rose, and most recently, becoming the Department of Microbiology & Immunology in 2009 under Chair Sankar Ghosh. Our beginnings were indisputably humble, so we hope our future will prove correspondingly prosperous.