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Morton N. Swartz, COMMENTARY: Rosenow EC. Studies in pneumonia and pneumococcus infection. J Infect Dis 1904; 1:280–312, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, Volume 189, Issue 1, 1 January 2004, Pages 128–164, https://doi.org/10.1086/381788
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Describing research performed a century ago requires placing it in the bacteriologic and clinical context of the time—only 2 decades after the first demonstration of the pneumococcus, by Pasteur in France and by Sternberg in New York. Salient discoveries during the 3½ decades straddling Rosenow’s article in the first volume of the Journal provide perspective (table 1) [1, 2]
The clinical background in which Rosenow’s studies should be placed is best outlined in the 1894 edition of Osler’s Practice of Medicine in the section on pneumonia [3]. Lobar pneumonia is described as an inflammation of the lungs, with “an organism, the diplococcus pneumoniae invariably found” (p. 511) therein; old age, debilitating conditions, and alcoholism are noted as predisposing factors, the latter “perhaps the most potent.” Pathologically, the 3 stages (engorgement and red and gray hepatization) had been recognized since the time of Laennec. By Osler’s time, it was known that, in the stage of red hepatization, cover-glass preparations revealed diplococci, many within polymorphonuclear leukocytes
