EMANUEL EDWARD KLEIN’S BOOK ON DISEASES OF BIRDS

Abstract

Emanuel Edward Klein (1844 - 1925) was a British microbiologist of Croatian origin. He was born in Osijek in what is currently the Republic of Croatia and which was then part of the Habsburg Monarchy, he completed his medical studies in Vienna in 1869, and went on to spend his entire career in London. Although trained as an anatomist, embryologist and histologist, his main area of research was microbiology. Due to the fact that back then it was a new and fast developing discipline, he was able to pursue his interests in many directions and make significant discoveries, such as the identification of the ‘Bacillus enteritidis sporogenes’ as a cause of summer hospital diarrhoeas. Although the overwhelming majority of his researches dealt with bacteria which attacked humans, in 1892 he published a book entitled The Etiology and Pathology of Grouse Disease, Fowl Enteritis, and Some Other Diseases Affecting Birds, which revealed the results of his experiments on the bacteria which affected birds. In the context of the general development of the microbiology, this paper tries to give an objective evaluation of this until now widely neglected book.