Wie man Mikroben auf Reisen schickt

Knowledge does not travel on its own. Bacteriology's laboratory practice depended on comprehensive logistics to be mobilized. Katharina Kreuder-Sonnen follows Polish physicians in their efforts to make microbes travel. Inscriptions of laboratory techniques and the mobilization of laboratory devices were important tools in this process. The history of circulating bacteriological knowledge connects Polish doctors with research institutions from Berlin to Tunis, integrates them into a global history of knowledge and leads us to rethink the categories of center and periphery. At the same time, the study tells us the story of how bacteriological knowledge was introduced to medical practice, first in the Kingdom of Poland and then in the Polish state founded in 1918 – a story which can only be encompassed by taking the practices and materialities of bacteriological laboratory practices into account
The study was awarded the 2016 dissertation prize of the German Society for the History of Medicine, Natural Sciences and Technology.