Boston : Little, Brown, and company, 1880.
Description : [1]-227 p., [10 l.] pl. ; ill.: 19 phot., 4 lith., tbls. ; 21.5cm.
Photograph : Heliotypes. 4 leaves composed with 16 photomicrographs ; 1 leaf with 2 photomicrographs ; 1 leaf reproducing a drawing.
Photographer : Dr. George Miller Sternberg.
Subject : Human microbiome — Bacteria.
Notes :
To give additional value to this portion of the work, figures of many of the best-known forms, drawn from various foreign sources, and reproductions of some of my own photomicographs (by permission of the National Board of Health), have been introduced.
To avoid this want of confidence in results, which has naturally grown out of carelessly made observations and contradictory statements, it is desirable that full and minute details should be given of all observations and experiments made, and, whenever possible, that photomicrographs should be made of all micro-organisms described, or of a thin stratum of a liquid asserted not to contain any; as, when a sufficiently high power is used, this settles the question of their presence or absence, beyond dispute, and enables other students to make comparisons and measurements which cannot fail to promote the interests of true science.
The National Board of Health of the United States has the credit of first adopting this method of recording the results of scientific investigation, in this direction, as a constant and unimpeachable record of what has been seen by the investigator. The commission sent to Havana last summer for the investigation of yellow fever, was instructed to pursue this method, and was accompanied by a photographer and supplied with all the necessary appliances for carrying these instructions into effect.
There are no photographs in the French title. Besides the addition of an index, the addition and subtraction of bibliographical references, and the inclusion of his photomicrographs, Sternberg's translation is otherwise faithful to the original. This was the first general textbook on bacteriology published in France and America. The enlarged and revised second edition, published in 1894, was as much Sternberg's work as it was Magnin's and Sternberg is credited as its coauthor. However, A manual of bacteriology (GM-2509), published in 1892, was entirely Sternberg's achievement and it was the first truly modern textbook of bacteriology – what 20th century physicians would recognize as indispensible to the practice of medicine.
