Quotes from Henrici

In 1928, Arthur Henrici published a beautiful monograph on the morphology of bacteria. He sampled bacteria of four different species throughout the course of their growth on agar slants, put them under the microscope, and carefully recorded the size and shape of many cells. The solidity of his results were lost in the debate over whether bacteria were pleiomorphic or monomorphic that raged before World War II. In the opening of the book, there are quotes which would never appear in a paper today:

"the blind acceptance of the majority of bacteriologists of the Cohn-Koch dogma of the constancy of cell forms and the immutability of bacterial species, which has discouraged all investigation of problems of morphology, inheritance, and variation in bacteria for a good many years."

"bacteriologists have frequently noted that their organisms appeared different from day to day, but have blindly ignored all variations from the textbook picture as pathological, as evidence of injury or death of the cells, or else have considered the variations noted to be of such a haphazard character as to be of no significance. The development of specific biochemical and serological reactions has made possible the identification of organisms without having recourse to their morphologic characters, and the carrying on of many types of bacteriological investigation without ever using the microscope."

My advisor tells me it is no longer acceptable in a paper to call a group of investigators stupid, blind, or ignorant, even if they are.