12/18/2011
It's time for our monthly episode of Science Diction, where we explore the origins of scientific words with my guest Howard Markel, professor of history of medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, also director of the Center for the History of Medicine there. He joins us WUOM. Welcome back, Howard.
HOWARD MARKEL: Good afternoon, Ira.
FLATOW: We have a very interesting word, or actually lab equipment today.
MARKEL: That we do. It's my favorite plate. It's the Petri dish.
FLATOW: The Petri dish. How did that get started?
MARKEL: Yeah. Well, it was designed by a guy named Petri - Julius Richard Petri, to be exact. He was a military physician. He worked for the German army. And in 1877, he found himself assigned to the Imperial Health Office in Berlin, which was a laboratory ran by Robert Koch. Now, Robert Koch was the Kaiser of bacteriology. He discovered the cause of cholera and tuberculosis and anthrax. So it was sort of like being a bush leaguer suddenly called up to play short stop for the Yankees.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
MARKEL: And in order for Koch to make his discoveries, he had to figure out how to grow not only lots of bacteria, but grow them in a reliable, pure culture technique. And that was a big problem, because a lot of the earlier methods were opened to the air. And, you know, a lot of other germs would join on to the media and grow. And you wouldn't really know what you were dealing with. Some were grown in test tubes. Some were grown in liquor glasses. But...
FLATOW: By the way, it would seemed like it's a no-brainer to come up with a little piece of glass, you put another piece of glass on top, and you've sealed it off.