Abstract
As Fleck himself encouraged us to do, I shall attempt a survey of his main work through one of his own methodological concepts. This concept which he applies in a sometimes loose but always stimulating way is the concept of style (Denkstil).
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Notes and References
So far, the word’ specificity’ was frequently used by some authors for ‘disease’: for instance, “La seconde observation concerne une femme qui niait toute spécificité2026;. On désire ětre fixé sur la spécificité du rejeton.” (C. Levaditi et J. Roche: La syphilis, Paris, 1909, pp. 127-129.)
The Lamarckian point of view on evolution was very strong at the time among Pasteur’s colleagues. On attempts to present the attenuation of virus as a Lamarckian procedure, see A.-M. Moulin: Pasteurisme et Lamarckisme, Bull. Institut Pasteur, Paris, 1985, in press.
To compare with the bold text of the Comptes rendus de l’Académie des Sciences: “J’ai passé sous silence une question ardue dont l’étude m’a pris un temps considérable. Je m’étais persuadé, à vrai dire je ne sais pourquoi, que tous les faits d’atténuation que j’observais s’expliqueraient d’une manière plus conforme aux lois naturelles dans l’hypothèse de mélanges en proportions variables et déterminées, de deux virus, l’un très virulent, l’autre très atténué, que par l’existence d’un virus à virulence progressivement variable. Après m’ětre, pour ainsi dire, acharné à la recherche d’une démonstration expérimentale de cette hypothèse de seuls virus, j’ai fini par acquérir la conviction que ce n’était pas la vérité.” (L. Pasteur: C. R. Acad. Sci. 1880, in Oeuvres, Tome VI, p. 331.) For the debate on attenuated virus, cf. P. Mazumdar: Landsteiner and the Problem of Species, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1976, part I.
A System of Bacteriology in Relation to Medicine, Medical Research Council, London, 1931, Vol. VI.
Phagocytosis referred to the ability of white blood cells to engulf any sort of particle.
J. Bordet: Traité de l’immunité dans les maladies infectieuses, Masson, Paris, pp. 443–444.
L. P. Rubin: ‘Styles in Scientific Explanation, Paul Ehrlich and Svante Arrhenius on Immunochemistry’, Journal of the History of Medicine (October 1980), pp. 397–425.
K. Landsteiner: ‘On the Specificity of Agglutinins and Precipitins’, Journal of Experimental Medicine 40 (1924), 91–107. Pauline Mazumdar has very nicely focused her main work on Landsteiner and specificity, cf. op. cit.
E. G. Clark et al.: ‘The Oslo Study of the Natural History of Untreated Syphilis’, J. Chronic Diseases 2,3 (1955), 311–349.
The first paper written in the USA was an editorial in the JAMA of 1907. (H. Hecht: ‘Half a Century of a Serodiagnosis of Syphilis’, Archives of Dermatology 4 (1956), 433.) In the latter part of 1909, there were only three English papers on the subject of the Wassermann test (L. W. Harrison: Half a Life-time in the Management of Venereal Diseases, op. cit., p. 444.)
J. Kolmer: ‘Serological Tests for Syphilis’, Archives of Dermatology op. cit., p. 457.
The famous syphilologist Alfred Fournier suggested the term ‘parasyphilis’ for late manifestations known as neurosyphilis: for him, they were not caused by the syphilitic ‘virus’ since they were resistant to mercury. The Wassermann reaction linked parasyphilis, primary lesions and latent syphilis in the newborn, before Noguchi demonstrated in 1913 active treponema in the brains of general paralytics. Cf. E. Lomax: ‘Infantile Syphilis as an Example of XIXth Century Belief in the Inheritance of Acquired characteristics’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 34, 1 (1979), 23-39.
P. A. Richmond: ‘The Germ Theory of Disease’, in A. M. Lilienfeld (ed.), Aspects of the History of Epidemiology. Times, Places and Persons, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1978, p. 87.
On the success of the word’ style’ as an analytic term for the history of science, cf. Ian Hacking, ‘Language, Truth and Reason’, in Martin Hollis and Stevens Lukes (eds.): Rationality and Relativism, Oxford, 1982, p. 51.
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Moulin, AM. (1986). Fleck’s Style. In: Cognition and Fact. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 87. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4498-5_21
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