Chapter 1 - Historical Overview

Abstract

The history of gnotobiotics, or portions or summaries of it, has been presented in several previous sources (Carter and Foster, 2005; Coates and Gustafsson, 1984; Foster, 1980a; Gustafsson, 1959a; Heine, 1998; Kirk, 2012; Lindsey and Baker, 2005; Luckey, 1963c; Mickelsen, 1962; Pleasants, 1965, 1974; Pollard, 1964; Rahija, 2006; Reyniers, 1959b; Trexler, 1983, 1985; Trexler and Orcutt, 1999; Wostmann, 1996). In the interest of a convenient source of background and perspective, an overview is provided here. For those interested in more detail, Thomas Luckey's 1963 book, Germfree Life and Gnotobiology (Luckey, 1963c), which we have relied on considerably, provides the most comprehensive account of history up to the early 1960s. It is available in electronic form from Elsevier (http://store.elsevier.com), Amazon.com (www.amazon.com), and Books-A-Million (www.booksamillion.com), and original copies can occasionally be obtained via the used book market using services and vendors such as Google Books (books.google.com), Amazon.com, and AbeBooks.com (www.abebooks.com). [A nutritional biochemist, Luckey, published a short autobiography (Luckey, 2007) a few years before his death in 2014 at age 94. Aficionados will find it interesting; he was evidently somewhat eccentric.] A number of other original works contain not only additional detailed information but also many interesting illustrations not included in those cited above. Unfortunately, much of the material is difficult to access, if not impossible for practical purposes, because of age or language. Some sources, although published in English, were of limited distribution and can be difficult or impossible to locate, although some of the books and symposium proceedings cited herein can occasionally be obtained from used book vendors. Services such as WorldCat (www.worldcat.org) are helpful in locating materials accessible only in library archives, such as those of the University of Notre Dame. On the other hand, some publications in scientific periodicals, though older, are nevertheless freely available online; these are indicated below where cited.