In search of sick parrots: Karl Friedrich Meyer, disease detective

Abstract

In 1950 Reader's Digest invited Paul De Kruif to pen a tribute to his friend, the Swiss-born veterinarian and bacteriologist Karl Friedrich Meyer. De Kruif had first met Meyer in 1911 shortly after Meyer's arrival in the USA, and in 1926 when Sinclair Lewis was casting around for a real-life disease detective with which to populate his novel Arrowsmith, it is said that De Kruif suggested Meyer as the model for Gustaf Sondelius, Lewis's Swedish plague-hunter. 2 years later, in 1928, De Kruif, a Dutchman who had worked at the Rockefeller Institute before turning his hand to science writing, hit the publishing jackpot with Microbe Hunters, a history of the “great men” of medical microbiology, so it was only natural that Reader's Digest should ask him to pen a similar panegyric to Meyer.