THE DEPARTMENT OF BACTERIOLOGY AND SEROLOGY AND THE HYGIENIC LABORATORY
THE beginning of bacteriology in the University can be traced back to 1881. In June of that year the Board of Regents established a School of Political Science, and among the courses listed was Sanitary Science, taught by Dr. Victor Clarence Vaughan (Mount Pleasant College [Mo.] '72, Ph.D. Michigan '76, '78m, LL.D. ibid. '00), then Assistant Professor of Physiological Chemistry. In the outline of the course, as given in the University Calendar for 1881-82, twelve main topics were presented, and among these the fifth is of special interest, since it concerned "Ferments and Germs; physiological ferments, and fermentation; disease germs; filth diseases; antiseptics and disinfectants and their use; quarantine, vaccination, etc." This was an elective course begun in October, 1881, in the Department of Literature, Science, and the Arts and consisted of lectures, twice weekly, in the first semester.
At that period it was quite proper to speak of the "germ theory," for bacteriology was then in its infancy. The bacteria of several human diseases, apart from those of animals, had been seen, but in the absence of suitable means of cultivation it was not possible to prove their role as causative agents. It was early in 1881 that Pasteur and, independently, a few weeks later, Major G. M. Sternberg, of the United States Army, discovered the microbe of sputum septicemia which later came to be identified as the cause of pneumonia. The bacillus of tuberculosis was not discovered until the spring of 1882. Again, it was in 1881 that Pasteur began his experimental work leading to vaccination or the preventive inoculation against anthrax and hydrophobia, thus opening up the field of immunology. At this time Dr. Sternberg, Dr. T. J. Burrill, professor of botany at the University of Illinois, and Dr. H. J. Detmers, of the federal Department of Agriculture, were
