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Gerald W Tannock, Commentary: Remembrance of microbes past, International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 34, Issue 1, February 2005, Pages 13–15, https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyh380
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Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) established a central theme of psychoanalysis: the past is alive in the present. Influences experienced in the past are not something that can be completely outgrown by the individual or society; they remain vital parts of existence.
Rene Dubos (1901–1982), French-born American microbiologist, experimental pathologist, environmentalist, humanist, and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, explored in a number of books the interplay between environmental forces and the physical, mental, and spiritual development of humankind. His article in the journal Pediatrics entitled ‘Biological Freudianism: lasting effects of early environmental influences’ and written in collaboration with his postdoctoral fellows Dwayne Savage and Russell Schaedler (soon to be eminent scientists in their own right) encapsulated this theme.1 Drawing on results obtained from experiments with specific-pathogen-free mice, the authors concluded that ‘From all points of view, the child is truly the father of the man, and for this reason we need to develop an experimental science that might be called biological Freudianism. Socially and individually the response of human beings to the conditions of the present is always conditioned by the biological remembrance of things past’. With this two-sentence statement the works of William Wordsworth, Sigmund Freud, and Marcel Proust were deftly wedded to biology.