Digital Gallery

This recipe book for various beers, wines, and bitters advises on how to use alcoholic beverages as household and medical remedies. It offers instructions on, among other things, how to whiten sheets, dry damp walls, and treat rheumatism with alcohol.

Over a half century before Louis Pasteur’s work, which proved that microorganisms are the agents of fermentation, a medical student reports on his experiments, keeping in mind that temperature and volume changes may reveal something about the nature of fermentation. He concluded that something in the air—implied as chemical—causes fermentation.

A nineteenth-century work on diphtheria gives the history of the disease, lists its different forms, levels of severity, and symptoms, discusses factors that impact the disease’s spread and severity, such as geography and socio-economic status, and reflects on treatment options. Among other things, Headlam suggests avoiding blood-letting, only using escharotics (salves which cause the tissue to die and slough off) in the early stages of the disease, and simple gargles with gentle chemicals.

This book gives a history of diphtheria and lists its cause and symptoms. The author describes using homeopathic treatments on patients, including Aconite, a highly toxic plant extract, for pain and discomfort.

Cutbush discusses the use of additives in medicines, foods, and alcohol and how to identify poisons. Predating Louis Pasteur’s work in determining microbes as the agents of fermentation, the book describes fermentation and other processes as “spontaneous,” which reflects then widely accepted theory of organisms’ and natural processes’ coming into existence spontaneously from dust, air, or other organisms.

This book instructs the reader on how to detect additive food and alcohol that sellers use to stretch ingredients and strengthen the potency of their products for the purpose of increasing sales and profits. It mentions the ways sellers interfere with the fermentation of alcohol to increase volume and its intoxicating effects. A main motif is the use of yeast and fermentation to create products for sale. The book predates Louis Pasteur’s groundbreaking work, which determined that microbes were the agents of fermentation, and that microbes come from like organisms, rather than spontaneously coming into existence or from dust, air, or dissimilar organisms. It reflects views of fermentation before Pasteur’s work.

Friedrich Christian Accum (1769–1838) was a German chemist whose work primarily entailed efforts to keep foods free of dangerous additives. His book, A treatise on adulterations of food… instructs the reader on how to detect substances added to food and medicines which may harm people.

This book explains the chemical changes that take place during natural processes, including fermentation and decomposition, respiration, and digestion. The authors emphasize a chemical explanation for fermentation, refuting microorganisms as its agents. It was published a couple of decades before Pasteur’s experiments proved that microbes were the agents of fermentation and other natural processes.

A booklet for the National Library of Medicine’s exhibition on Louis Pasteur offers a brief biography and highlights his contributions to the understanding of fermentation and acceptance of germ theory by the scientific community. It includes an image of a chemical model Pasteur made and some of his notes.

A catalog for the National Library of Medicine’s exhibition on Louis Pasteur includes brief introductions for display cases along with lists of “manuscripts, books, journals, pamphlets, offprints, and original pictures from the National Library of Medicine collections,” which were on display in the exhibition. The introduction and annotation text for the cases and displayed items offer information on Pasteur’s major contributions to science, including work with fermentation, germ theory, crystallography, and rabies; and identifies some of his influences, proponents, and opponents.

Louis Pasteur’s (1822–1895) groundbreaking work with yeast determined that microbes are the agents of fermentation, and that they originate from like organisms, rather than spontaneously coming into existence or from dust, air, or other organisms. His discoveries supported the germ theory of disease and led to industries based on fermentation, like the beer and wine industries, adopting more scientific methods of production.

Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming (1881–1955) discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in 1928. He earned the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945, along with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. Fleming and his colleagues’ contribution to biomedical science made it possible to fight many life-threatening infections and spawned the pharmaceutical industry.

Ernst Boris Chain (1906–1979) was a German-born, British biochemist credited for the discovery of penicillin, along with Alexander Fleming and Howard Florey. For this breakthrough, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945, along with his colleagues. Penicillin, the first antibiotic, made many infections, from bothersome to life-threatening, treatable. Its discovery spawned the pharmaceutical industry.

Frederick Grant Banting (1891–1941) was a Canadian physician who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923, along with John James Rickard MacLeod, for being the first to extract insulin from the pancreas. This advancement allowed insulin to be collected from animal glands and used to treat people with diabetes. He and colleagues partnered with pharmaceutical companies to mass produce insulin.

John James Rickard Macleod (1876–1935) was a Canadian biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1923, along with Frederick Grant Banting, for being the first to extract insulin from the pancreas. This advancement allowed insulin to be collected from animal glands and used to treat people with diabetes. He and colleagues partnered with pharmaceutical companies to mass produce insulin.