REVELATIONS IN SCIENCE: When Heroism Causes Harm
Art Design: huxley.media via Photoshop inspired by René Magritte’s painting «Portrait of Stephi Langui», 1961
Of course, it is easiest to evaluate scientific mishaps that occur due to blatant falsifications or fraud — finding the forgery, exposing the cheat, and everything falling into place. No matter how much Stephen Emmens boasted about turning silver into gold, he was asked, «Show us!» — and when he couldn’t, it became clear to everyone.
Falsifying data is also something that can be easily checked — when an experiment is repeated, and it fails to produce the same results as with «Blondlot’s N-rays», it becomes clear that there is nothing to discuss. However, there are more unfortunate cases where an experiment is flawlessly conducted; the results are evident, but they are explained in a completely different way than the experimenter thinks.
Dr. Max von Pettenkofer (1818–1901) had a brilliant career. He became the founder of medical hygiene as a scientific discipline and achieved significant success in both science and the arts. Unfortunately, he is best known for an experiment that led him to completely erroneous conclusions.
EVEN BEFORE MEDICINE…
Max Pettenkofer’s father, a poor farmer with eight children, could not afford to pay for his education. Help came from his uncle, the court pharmacist to the Bavarian king and a well-known chemist, who took his nephew on as an apprentice. Science suited Max well; he studied successfully and with pleasure — until everything collapsed! Max accidentally broke one of the valuable pharmacy vessels, and his outraged uncle hit him. His sense of dignity did not allow Max to continue his studies — he left his uncle’s house. He became a dramatic actor, adopting the artistic pseudonym Tenhof by cutting out the middle part of his last name.
After performing exceptionally well in the role in Goethe’s tragedy «Egmont», he planned to achieve success in his new field, but love got in the way. His fiancée categorically told him that art, of course, was beautiful, but science was sound. His parents agreed, and Max, as a faithful German, chose utility.
He clearly had exceptional abilities — he transferred from Munich University’s natural sciences faculty to the medical faculty and became a doctor of medicine at the age of 25. Pettenkofer also put considerable effort into chemistry, achieving significant heights.
For a while, he worked at the Bavarian Mint and developed a technology for extracting precious platinum from Bavarian silver thalers. At the same time, he rediscovered a method for producing aventurine glass, an excellent artificial mineral filled with golden sparkles as if glowing from within, first found by the Venetians 100 years before him. He also invented and created a similar artificial mineral called australite, which was found to be used by jewelers.
Additionally, Max discovered a new method for producing cement, which was on par with the best British brands in terms of quality. These achievements alone would be enough to leave a good memory of him, and this is only in the field of chemistry — we haven’t even touched on medicine yet!
Pettenkofer’s traits — persistence and inventiveness — were clearly manifested in his scientific work. He found a new method for producing illuminating gas, not from coal but from resinous trees, which was significantly cheaper.
The city of Basel decided to illuminate using gas produced by Pettenkofer’s method, invested in the lighting system, and launched it — and suddenly, it failed! But Pettenkofer did not lose heart. He rushed to his laboratory, began investigating, and found the cause of the failure! His solution turned out to be entirely correct, and the lighting system started working as expected. This is a significant merit for a scientist — brilliant ideas alone are not enough; the ability to implement them is essential.
THE CREATION OF A NEW SCIENCE
All these successes were achieved in the field of chemistry, which for Pettenkofer was secondary — the primary focus of his efforts became medicine. This began almost by chance — the Bavarian king demanded an explanation as to why the air in his palace was so dry that it irritated His Majesty’s throat. Pettenkofer was able to answer this question and provided recommendations on how to improve the situation, achieving his first success in medical hygiene — a scientific discipline that he essentially created as a separate science.
He proposed opening a department of hygiene at Munich University and headed it himself, later organizing the first hygiene institute in Europe. His scientific work on urban health improvements led to a noticeable reduction in mortality rates in British and German towns. He developed the first hygiene standards for nutrition and air exchange in buildings. Overall, a very respectable list of accomplishments — it’s unfortunate that Pettenkofer is most remembered not for these achievements…
One of the most critical tasks of hygiene measures, in his view, was the fight against the dangerous infection of cholera. His hatred of cholera perhaps had something personal about it: in 1852, he contracted the disease. He suffered severely, and his daughter Anna survived a severe case of cholera by a miracle.
Pettenkofer was confident that hygiene measures could prevent the spread of cholera, and evidently, he was right — modern science holds the same view. However, his hypothesis about the specific cause of this disease explained the connection between cholera and hygiene problems in a very peculiar way — Pettenkofer believed that cholera was caused by miasmas emitted by filth and household waste. He considered groundwater to be the main spreader of cholera infection.
As for the theory that the cause of this terrible disease was a specific microbe discovered by Robert Koch and named the cholera vibrio, Pettenkofer regarded it with the utmost skepticism. He thought it was just a trend to attribute all diseases to microbes and sarcastically referred to proponents of such theories as «microbe hunters».
Even Koch himself had difficulties proving that the cholera virus was the primary and sole cause of cholera — he was unable to infect laboratory animals with cholera for a detailed study of the insidious virus. (We now know that cholera is a disease that only affects humans.)
These failures only strengthened Pettenkofer’s confidence, and he decided to prove his point in the most radical way possible. Koch claims that the cholera vibrio causes cholera. Nonsense — he believed it could be safely introduced into the human body.
He, Pettenkofer, was so confident in this that he would quickly prove the harmlessness of the cholera vibrio culture in the most demonstrative way — by drinking it in front of scientific observers and not contracting cholera as a result! What would Robert Koch and his supporters say to that? What arguments could they possibly offer against such a compelling fact?
SO, IS THE CHOLERA VIBRIO NOT CHOLERA?
The decisive experiment was conducted on October 7, 1892. Pettenkofer specifically ordered a cholera vibrio culture on agar from the Berlin Institute of Health, from which a broth culture was prepared in his Munich Hygiene Institute.
To ensure that the hydrochloric acid in his stomach did not harm the vibrios, he drank a solution of baking soda to neutralize the acid. Then he ingested approximately one billion cholera vibrios (at most a couple of million less). The scientist even remembered to rinse the glass containing the vibrio culture with water and drink it to ensure no microbes were wasted.
He took no hygienic measures to prevent himself, who was about to shed the multiplied vibrios into the city’s sewer system, from potentially infecting his fellow citizens because he did not understand the need — he was convinced from the start that the cholera vibrio did not cause cholera.
Three days later, he began experiencing stomach discomfort, but not as severe as typically occurs with cholera. He then switched to a special diet, and soon the symptoms subsided. His bodily excretions contained swarms of cholera vibrios, but within a week, they disappeared. During this time, he took no medications.
Literally, a week later, Pettenkofer’s assistant, Rudolf Emmerich, repeated the experiment. He had a much tougher time — his gastrointestinal issues were significantly more severe than his boss’s, and he had to seek medical help. Nevertheless, his illness was much milder than the average case of cholera, and he fully recovered in less than two weeks.
Did the experimenters experience the malaise, a mild form of cholera? They categorically denied it. Here are Pettenkofer’s own words: «I venture to assume that Robert Koch and his numerous followers will say that nothing has been proven, except what they assumed earlier, namely, that Emmerich and I, after ingesting the ‘cholera commas,’ experienced a true cholera outbreak, albeit in a mild form and without a fatal outcome. I am pleased to give my opponents this satisfaction, but I still cannot agree with their views».
Two people drank a pure culture of cholera vibrios, and neither of them contracted the severe, life-threatening form of cholera. But the fact that they did experience some health issues — what was it, cholera or something else?
In the literature, several prominent bacteriologists claim to have repeated Pettenkofer’s experiment on themselves with the same negative result. This is not entirely accurate — Nikolai Gamaleya in 1888, Daniil Zabolotny, Ivan Savchenko, and Vladimir Havkin in 1893 took a pure culture of cholera Viridis only after taking a culture of killed or weakened viridis, practically a vaccine — it worked, and no disease developed.
Indeed, Ilya Mechnikov, in his Paris laboratory, ingested a pure culture of the Vibrio following the same protocol as Pettenkofer — and he also did not fall ill! However, Mechnikov’s assistant, Jupy, who repeated the experiment, contracted cholera in a highly severe form.
Mechnikov (unlike Pettenkofer) was deeply shaken by the terrible example he had set and declared that he would take his own life if Jupy died. Fortunately, the assistant survived, although it was by a miracle — one wonders if he had died, would Pettenkofer have felt guilty? Most likely not — he had risked his own life, and so far, his conclusions had not been disproven.
IN FACT
Today, it is well-established that the cause of cholera is indeed the cholera vibrio, and miasmas have nothing to do with it. The human body reacts differently to pathogenic microbes: some people may have natural immunity, while others may experience the disease in a mild form, but the cause of cholera is singular, and without the cholera vibrio, there are no cholera patients.
Pettenkofer did not prove that cholera vibrios do not cause cholera — he only demonstrated that cholera does not always occur in these cases. Drawing conclusions based on an insufficient number of experiments was a common mistake in the past.
Nowadays, we have mathematical tools that help avoid this error. Still, in the late 19th century, these tools were just being developed — not to mention that even now, doctors are only beginning to master mathematics to the necessary extent.
Meanwhile, there’s a relevant anecdote about a doctor who allowed a terminally ill patient with uremia to eat a bowl of Borscht — and the patient recovered! The doctor immediately prepares an article with the sensational headline: «Borscht Cures Uremia!» and feeds Borscht to a second patient. But that patient dies, and the doctor adds to the article’s headline the words «in 50% of cases.»
As for Pettenkofer, he never had the chance to doubt his views — he shot himself in his home in 1901 at the age of 83, depressed by old age ailments and the loss of all his loved ones — his wife and three children.
I would not call his persistence unfounded — he did not complete his experiments. This, too, caused considerable trouble, but can such errors ever be avoided entirely? The path to scientific truth is complex and convoluted, with mischievous twists along the way…
Personally, I feel a bit sorry for Max Pettenkofer. He was a talented and hardworking scientist who achieved notable results in science yet is best known for a significant and undeniable scientific mistake. He deserved many kind words for all he accomplished and regretted his mistake, but nothing more.
LITERATURE:
- Hugo Glaser. Dramatic Medicine. Moscow, «Molodaya Gvardiya», 1965, 161 pages.
- M. S. Shoifet. One Hundred Great Doctors. Moscow, «Veche», 2006, 528 pages.
