The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity.

Lorenzo Servitje

doi:10.3390/antibiotics10010019

Abstract

Literary-rhetorical devices like figurative language and analogy can help explain concepts that exceed our capacity to grasp intuitively. It is not surprising these devices are used to discuss virulence, pathogenesis, and antibiotics. Allusions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seem to be used with particular frequency in research pertaining to pathogens, especially in studies contemporary with our evolving understanding of antibiotic resistance. More recent references to the text have appeared in research parsing definitions of virulence and acknowledging the role of anti-virulence in future therapeutics. While it is obvious that scientists invoke Stevenson’s story for stylistic purposes, its use could go beyond the stylistic—and might even generate rhetorical and imaginative possibilities for framing research. This perspective discusses the first published allusion to Jekyll and Hyde in reference to virulence and pathogenesis; comments on a select number of specific instances of Jekyll and Hyde in contemporary scientific literature; briefly contextualizes the novel; and concludes with the implications of a more productive engagement with humanistic disciplines in the face of antibiotic resistance.

Highlights

Mr Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
Kendall uses glucose to alter the Hyde-virulent diphtheriae into the Jekyll-avirulent diphtheriae—the monster is civilized, “promoting the prosperity and happiness of the human race” by producing the most innocuous of all substances: buttermilk
We can read Kendall’s extended analogy ironically, as he uses Jekyll and Hyde to do that which the original novel critiques: “civilize” and repurpose nature. His allusion says more about the zeitgeist of technological utopianism that would characterize the golden age of antibiotics at mid-century than it does about C. diphtheriae

Summary

Introduction

Mr Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity. Antibiotics 2021, 10, 19. https://doi.org/10.3390/ antibiotics10010019. Kendall uses glucose to alter the Hyde-virulent diphtheriae into the Jekyll-avirulent diphtheriae—the monster is civilized, “promoting the prosperity and happiness of the human race” by producing the most innocuous of all substances: buttermilk This is a reversal of the complex function of environment in the original novel, where the corruption, pollution, and matter out of place—literal and metaphorical—of late Victorian London give birth to Edward Hyde. We can read Kendall’s extended analogy ironically, as he uses Jekyll and Hyde to do that which the original novel critiques: “civilize” and repurpose nature (pathogens, in his case, or baser human instincts, in the case of Dr Jekyll) His allusion says more about the zeitgeist of technological utopianism that would characterize the golden age of antibiotics at mid-century than it does about C. diphtheriae. From our twenty-first-century vantage, it is clear that Kendall, Sokoloff, and Victor Frankenstein’s grand visions were short-sighted; they were catastrophic

Novel Allusions in the Age of Resistance and Anti-Virulence

Conclusions