Microbe Hunters

This book takes a unique look at some scientists that you know (Pasteur, Koch etc. ) as well as many others that you've probably never heard of. The author's tone is one of excitement and wonderment and the style with which he writes makes it sound as if he is so happy to be able to describe the thoughts, experiments and experiences of each of these scientists. I did not know about all of the things Pasteur is responsible for and did not know about his personality compared to Koch. I also did not know that there was some interest in discovering things for your country to claim bragging rights. All in all a great read. Please keep in mind that this was published originally almost 100 years ago and there are some areas where the author refers to other people in an egregious way. However, the content of the book overall is enjoyable and gives you a new appreciation for current scientific ethics!

I first read this book almost 60 years ago and have remembered some of the stories ever since. With the current publicity about infectious disease, e.g., Ebola, and having received a Kindle for Christmas, I downloaded and, once again, read Microbe Hunters. It is a fabulous set of biographies, written by an superb story teller who brings each of the real people, the microbe hunters themselves, to life.I am a great admirer of Louis Pasteur, arguably the most heroic of the microbe hunters. de Kruif details many of Pasteur's triumphs and even includes some of his "ethical" imperfections, effectively "humanizing" him. Nevertheless, Pasteur still comes across as the best of the best, a superb basic scientist and an even better applied scientist. Pasteur and Koch's "germ theory of disease" ranks up there with Newton's explanation of gravity, Maxwell's unification of electricity and magnetism, and Einstein's relativity as one of the all time greatest scientific explanations of how the world works.I recommend this book to people of all ages, from 10 - 100. Thank you, Paul de Kruif!!Note: Thanks to a wonderful high school physics teacher, I became a physicist and have spent my career working with lasers. Had my high school biology teacher been anywhere as good, I surely would have become a medical researcher hunting for microbes.

Author has good entertaining writing style and tells interesting facts about those who pursued discovering microbes. I liked learning about all he wrote about.

This book is almost 100 years old and tells of a time that most Americans have forgotten, especially cogent in these times of Covid-19. I can't give it 5 stars because of the racist and sexist comments and the inventive dialog that the author creates to try to get inside the heads of the earliest discoverers of microbial disease. He was a man of his times but his enthusiasm for the subject is real. I think that if everyone read this book they would appreciate what medical science has done for humanity and the mirical of vaccines and antibiotics.

I had read this book as a teenager and had been very impressed with the very readable history of these great pioneers who enabled magnificent strides against infectious disease. I bought it for my young grandson who is just starting to use a microscope. Instead of forwarding it, I started reading it and ordered another copy for him. It is also excellent on illustrating the challenges and typical opposition in blazing new trails in science and medicine. While it is good on the facts, it is written in a dramatic style that older children will enjoy, and it conveys the personalities of these great researchers as well as their accomplishments. Chapters cover Leeuwnhoek, Spallanzani, Pasteur (two chapters), koch, Roux and Behring, Metchnikoff, Theobald Smith, Bruce, Ross and Grassi, Walter Reed, and Paul Ehrlich. Originally published in 1926, it also serves as a fascinating time capsule for the excitement over great progress against diseases that killed so many and made life quite uncertain in the then recent past, as well as reflecting attitudes and language of that era.

We bought this book months ago to use for high school science in our homeschool. The book itself is wonderful, but the quality of the binding is awful. We have only read one chapter and pages are literally falling out. This is supposed to be a brand new book. I’m very disappointment…especially since my return window is closed. 😔

"The development of microbiology as a new science" may not sound like a very exciting topic for a book, but in the hands of a writer like Paul de Kruif it is fascinating. It reads like a novel, with distinctly drawn characters, dramatic reveals, and a complex, edge-of-your-seat, life-or-death plot. The scientists described are now clearly delineated and memorable to me. Better yet, by showing many examples of how great leaps are made in man's conceptual knowledge, de Kruif helped me grasp what methods and attitudes are most productive of good science. I chose this book as a follow-on to reading of Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (in Lisa Vandamme's Read With Me online book club). I noticed many similar metaphors and turns of phrase in de Kruif's writing, and his spirit of admiration and curiosity about these scientists matched the spirit of Arrowsmith and his own heroes.

Este título es un clásico para conocer cómo fueron descubiertas muchas de las opciones actualmente disponibles y que revolucionaron la microbiología, salvando vidas y mejorando nuestra calidad de vida. En lo personal no me gustó mucho esta edición, pero es la única disponible. A final de cuentas las 5 estrellas es por el contenido. Por la edición, le daría 3 ya que no es de mucha calidad, y creo que este título merece una mejor edición.

Superb book, a classic in history of science

Must read for all the scientific ones, digging into the roots of everything that happens around them...just loved the reading experience.

An in-depth but understandable account of the great pioneers of medical research struggling against prejudice and the ignorance of the science of the day.

I first bought a pocket book edition of Microbe Hunters back in the 1970s. I read it a few times, and enjoyed it thoroughly. It reads like an adventure novel, and hold your interest throughout, relating the stories of Anton Leuwenhoeck, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch and others microbe hunters in fascinating detail. I took it along on a recent holiday to read again, but by the time I had done, the binding was coming apart and the book was in pieces. In checking on amazon.com I saw that the older edition was now rare and expensive but a new edition of the same book had been made, and the price was very reasonable, so I got two, one for me to keep and one for a friend that also likes reading stories about scientific discovery.