Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, medical research in the United States was descriptive and rudimentary. American physician-investigators were primarily defining and categorizing disease entities. However, seeds of more mechanistic research had been laid in Europe, particularly in Germany, including the germ theory of disease etiology resulting from Pasteur and Koch's discoveries and the detailed descriptive pathology of the human body by Virchow and others. Prior to World War I, a graduate of an American medical school with an interest in research commonly spent time in a laboratory of a productive European investigator. This European influence on American medicine and medical research was greatly respected, and a ..