Medical and Biological Constraints: Early Research on Variation in Bacteriology

Abstract

Studies of the role of social and institutional contexts of scientific research have rarely paid attention to the manner in which, in some fields, the formulation of scientific problems and research strategies is structured jointly by the theoretical and methodological commitments of scientists, and by considerations arising out of an interest in practical problem-solving. Because bacteriology was institutionalized predominantly as a medical field whose major professional goal was the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases, the development of research on bacterial variation before World War I is examined here in terms of an interaction between two sets of cognitive constraints imposed by the biological knowledge of the time, and by the changing concerns of the clinical practice of bacteriology.