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Dr. Theodor Rosebury: Grandfather of Modern Oral MicrobiologyDepartment of Oral Biology, Center for Oral Infectious Diseases, New Jersey Dental School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, 185 South Orange Avenue, Newark, NJ 07103, USA; finedh{at}umdnj.edu Martin Taubman, Editor
Key Words: Oral microbiology biological warfare spirochetes anaerobic chamber DR. THEODOR ROSEBURY: "PRE-EMINENT ORAL MICROBIOLOGIST OF HIS ERA" (from Socransky and Haffajee, 2005) I first became aware of Ted Rosebury in 1968, when, as a young Assistant Professor in Periodontology at the University of Pittsburgh, I discovered a book entitled Microorganisms Indigenous to Man (Rosebury, 1962). I still refer to this book and consider it a classic. My next encounter with Rosebury took place in 1971, while, as a post-doctoral student at Columbia University, I discovered what I thought to be an oral spirochete in the intestine of a Rhesus monkey. Because I stood alone in that belief, I decided to develop an antibody to oral spirochetes to prove the point one way or another (Kaye et al., 1975). In my efforts to identify the organism, I contacted the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to inquire about their spirochete collection. When I asked about obtaining a few of their oral spirochetes, I was told that I could have as many as I wanted, because the collection actually belonged to Columbia University. I was told that Dr. Theodor Rosebury, a world authority on the growth and caring of oral spirochetes, had donated the collection to the CDC when he retired from academics. At home that evening, I told the story to my wife and her mother. To my surprise, my mother-in-law said that she knew Rosebury and his brother Fred, that they were family friends, and that my wifes uncle, Dr. Samuel Greenberg, had done research in Roseburys lab in the 30s and 40s! FIRST MEETING My first three years at Columbia were spent as a post-doctoral student in the Pathology Department in the Medical School. I also had a joint appointment in the Department of Preventive Dentistry, whose head was Dr. Irwin Mandel, my mentor in dental research, and world-renowned for his work on saliva, plaque, caries, calculus, and preventive dentistry (Baum et al., 1997). Dr. Mandel did not work in Roseburys lab, but had studied with him when he attended Columbia Dental School in the 1940s. In 1971, the IADR meeting was in Chicago. After hearing the spirochete story, and realizing that we would be in Chicago and that Rosebury was living in Chicago, Irwin decided to arrange for a visit to Roseburys home. The visit was to include my wife, Dr. Solon A. Ellison and Dr. Mandel (both of whom had been Roseburys students at Columbia Dental School), and me. At that time, Dr. Ellison was the director and Chair of the Oral Biology Department at SUNY Buffalo (Emmings, 1999). I had heard that, since his retirement, Rosebury had dedicated himself to writing, cabinetmaking, and music. I had heard that he excelled in each area, and had become a consummate cabinetmaker, a renowned writer, and an exceptionally gifted flutist. It was with great anticipation that I arrived at the house of this revered microbiologist. Rosebury greeted his students, Mandel and Ellison, warmly. Dr. Mandel introduced my wife and me to Dr. Rosebury and reported that Rosebury had known several members of my wifes family and that her uncle Sam had worked in his laboratory. Rosebury expressed fond memories of Sam and the research they had done together and invited us to come up to his attic, where he had his reference library. It was truly remarkable to see the extent of his reference card catalogue, considering that he had retired from academics several years before. The card catalogue consisted of thousands of meticulously labeled 3 x 5 index cards in a space equivalent to a small university library. He then located a card that catalogued an article he had published with my wifes uncle in the Journal of Dental Research, entitled "Studies of lactobacilli in relation to caries in rats. II. Attempt to immunize rats on caries producing diets against lactobacilli" (Rosebury et al., 1934). I later discovered that caries vaccine scientists refer to this article as one of the first papers that attempted to document a vaccine developed to a caries-producing organism. WHO WAS THEODOR ROSEBURY?
Ted Rosebury was born in London on August 10, 1904. His family moved to the United States when he was six, and he became a naturalized citizen when he was 12 years old. He attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his DDS in 1928. In his own words, while in his junior year of dental school, he and a fellow dental student "read and studied (Bulletin Number Nineteen - A survey of dental education in the United States and Canada - conducted by Dr. William J. Gies and published in 1926 by The Carnegie Foundation) with intense interest....It is incidental that through my interest in the Bulletin I came to know Dr. Gies, to win a Fellowship in Biological Chemistry in his name at Columbia University, and thus to derive from him the personal guidance and inspiration that led me into a career in dental research and teaching" (Rosebury, 1957) (Fig. 1
Roseburys microbiological studies in the 1930s and 1940s expanded to include investigations defining the relationship of fusospirochetal infections to Acute Necrotizing Ulcerative Gingivitis (ANUG), then known as Vincents Infection. In conjunction with Dr. Gertrude Foley, also in the Department of Bacteriology, he established a guinea pig infection model in which they took scrapings from supra- and subgingival plaque in patients with ANUG and inoculated these scrapings into guinea pigs to demonstrate the transmissibility of the infection (Rosebury and Foley, 1939). While his work supported transmissibility in the animal model, he argued against transmissibility and communicability in humans, speculating that the "causative" organisms were part of the indigenous flora (Rosebury, 1946). Further, he claimed that disease outbreak was a consequence of either stress, related to immunological deficiency, or nutritional deficiency, which resulted in heightened disease susceptibility. It was this work on the guinea pig model and his rabbit model, developed later, that had the greatest impact on modern dental microbiology (Fig. 2
THE ROSEBURY LEGACY: THE GRANDFATHER OF MODERN ORAL MICROBIOLOGY IN THE USA Two students working on ANUG and variations on this model, Dr. Solon A. Ellison and Dr. J.B. MacDonald, went on to train a group of the most prominent dental researchers in modern-day dental microbiology and immunology in the USA.
The Ellison Line
The MacDonald Line
The Fusospirochetal Infection Model
MacDonalds Departure: Indigenous or Exogenous Infections? The debate about whether disease is caused by an overgrowth of members of the indigenous flora (Rosebury, 1949) or by specific organisms such as Bacteroides (MacDonald et al., 1960) is complex and is best summarized by a review of Walter Loesches Nonspecific Plaque Hypothesis (NSPH) and the alternative Specific Plaque Hypothesis (SPH). The NSPH states that disease is due to a substantial increase in the numbers of plaque organisms, resulting in an overwhelming microbial load that causes the body to succumb to disease. In contrast, the SPH states that it is possible that a specific plaque organism or groups of organisms are responsible for specific forms of periodontal disease (Loesche, 1976). It is not far-fetched to suggest that Rosebury, his students, or his students students provided the genesis of these ideas. Current research continues to address these issues (Socransky and Haffajee, 2005). ACADEMICS AND POLITICS: THE ROSEBURY DILEMMA The Rosebury story cannot be told without including the role that politics played in the unfolding of his academic career. Evidently, Rosebury was quite outspoken. Both his political and scientific beliefs were well-known. His political beliefs were an integral part of his being, and reaction to those beliefs had a major impact on his academic career and are therefore included in his story.
Elvin Kabats Story (Political Crisis, 1940s: Poisoned Ivies)
Barnet Levys Story (Politics 1950s: Its not who you know but who doesnt know you!)
Walter Loesches Story: The Anaerobic Chamber (Political Crisis, the late 1960s: Another Viet Nam Casualty) He modeled the chamber on the concept of the existing anaerobic jar (Brewer Jar), in which a series of vacuums, followed by successive introduction of oxygen-free gases (OFG) (N2 and, finally, 80% N2, 10% CO2, 10% H2), created an anaerobic environment. The resulting chamber was a stainless steel enclosure, about 6 feet by 2 feet by 2.5 feet, in which the technician could manipulate agar plates in the usual fashion through two rubber-glove ports. Entry of objects into the chamber was by a separate lock at one end of the chamber that could be evacuated and replenished with the OFG. Any residual oxygen was removed by the heating of palladium pellets within the chamber, which catalyzed its reaction with H2 to form water, which in turn had to be removed by desiccants. Rosebury was able to get support from the Center for Communicable Diseases to build the chamber for the express purpose of growing T. pallidum. But Roseburys political interests thwarted this goal. It was 1966, and the Viet Nam protests were heating up. An anti-war group invited Herbert Aptheker, a well-known Marxist scholar, and a recent visitor to Viet Nam, to speak at an anti-war rally in St. Louis. Rosebury invited Aptheker to be his house guest, and this caused a local conservative newspaper to focus on Rosebury and especially his membership in the Pugwash Society. The Pugwash Society was an international anti-war group that included Albert Einstein and Bertram Russell among its founding members. Rosebury was in this elite group because of his monograph against biological warfare, entitled "Peace or Pestilence, Biological Warfare and How to Avoid it". In the media blitz surrounding the Aptheker visit, an editorial called for Roseburys resignation. In combating these charges, Rosebury suffered greatly, and the publicity resulted in his being offered an early retirement package from Washington University. This left the fate of the anaerobic chamber unsettled, and along with it the plausibility of growing T. pallidum on artificial media. Walter had recently obtained his PhD from MIT and was studying, along with Sigmund Socransky, nutritional effects on anaerobic micro-organisms, such as spirochetes. Sig and Walter were invited by Rosebury and the CDC to St. Louis to discuss the future of the chamber. When they met with Rosebury, he was depressed and prepared to move to Chicago. Recognizing that his work with the chamber was over, he assigned its use to Sig and Walter. Loesche took the Rosebury chamber to Forsyth and then to Michigan, but quickly replaced it with the modified germ-free plastic chamber that Rolf Freter had developed (Arank et al., 1969). Freter had visited Rosebury in St. Louis and incorporated many ideas, such as the palladium catalysts and desiccants, into his chamber design. The Freter chamber has become the standard in anaerobic microbiology, but the Rosebury chamber was influential in its plan, and was the first anaerobic chamber used in microbiology. ROSEBURY AND THE GENERAL PUBLIC In early 1972, less than a year after I met Rosebury at his home in Chicago, I remember seeing him on the "Tonight" show, hosted by Johnny Carson. Carson interviewed him about his newly published book, Microbes and Morals: The strange story of venereal disease (Rosebury, 1971). It was his second appearance on the popular nightly television show. I remember telling my colleagues at Columbia that Rosebury was so important that he was interviewed by Johnny Carson, not once but twice! Little did I know at that time that the real contribution Rosebury made to modern science was much more far-reaching. ROSEBURY AND GENERAL MICROBIOLOGY It is more than likely that Ted Rosebury is better known outside of the dental research community. His national prominence initially resulted from his work at Camp Detrick, and this experience led to a book detailing his life during those trying times. This book, mentioned previously and entitled Peace or Pestilence, Biological Warfare and How to Avoid It, is a personal and down-to-earth description of microbiology turned upside down. The book, published in 1949, is particularly relevant today (Rosebury, 1949). In a recent book by Judith Miller, entitled Germs, Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, reviews the history of germ warfare in this country and reveals the following information: "In a secret report of July 1949, a panel of more than a dozen senior federal and private experts told the secretary of defense that germ weapons deserved more attention...and foreseeable advances would raise [such] weapons, silent but deadly...ideal for covert attacks." She further states that "some veterans of the secretive work disagreed with the governments reasoning. Theodor Rosebury, a microbiologist at Detrick during the war, assailed germ weapons in his 1949 book Peace or Pestilence. He warned that the fields promises were illusory and that its munitions had no real military value, since the outcome of germ attacks would always be impossible to predict or control. The expertise should instead be turned to attacking infectious diseases." Unfortunately, his plea had no immediate impact (Miller et al., 2001). In another recent revelation concerning the impact of this "little" book, an article in the Atlantic Monthly entitled "Inside the Al-Qaedas Hard Drive" indicated that Ayman al Zawahiri in Kandahar, in an e-mail to Atef, an associate of Osama Bin Laden, states that "Peace or Pestilence was one of the books he had read" (Cullison, 2004). While this book clearly outlines the perils of germ warfare, Rosebury also provides some insight into what he learned from the time he spent at Fort Detrick. He states that, in his scientific work, he had never experienced the success that could be derived from the team approach he experienced during his tenure in the Air Borne division. The devotion, cooperation, and success that came out of the collaboration of this group of scientists, drawn from diverse backgrounds, made a lasting impression. It was his feeling that this experience could provide an example of how science could solve important problems related to health and disease (Rosebury, 1949). Rosebury wrote several other books. One of note was Life on Man, a book that received a special commendation in the 1971 National Book Award science category. In a conference given at the California Institute of Technology on October 11, 2000, entitled "Differential Gene Expression in Development and Aging", welcoming remarks were made by Nobel Laureate Joshua Lederberg (http://www.grg.org/EllisonCalTech.htm). In those remarks, he suggested that, in addition to the genome and the proteome, the metabiome (the DNA descriptions of all species of natural flora and parasites, both beneficial and pathological) should be included in genetic studies. In that address, Lederberg strongly recommended that the "best source to learn more about this obscure category...can be found in a now out-of-print book by Theodor Rosebury (which he called a cult-favorite)", Life on Man (Rosebury, 1969). In February, 2006, in the journal Cell, Stanley Falkow, referred to by some as one of the founders of the field of Molecular Pathogenesis, wrote an article entitled "Is persistent bacterial infection good for your health?" (Falkow, 2006). He started the article by stating that, in Life on Man, "Theodor Rosebury reminded us 35 years ago that all life, including microbes, is a single community and that it would be a good idea to stop thinking indiscriminately of our unicellular companions as repulsive, contemptible, or even ferocious" (Falkow, 2006). In addition, Rosebury wrote a textbook mentioned previously, Microorganisms Indigenous to Man. This is the textbook that caught my attention as a fledgling academic and provided my first knowledge of Dr. Rosebury. To this day, I consider this book to be a classic microbiology text, because of its thoroughness and its careful portrayal of the bacteria that share our lives and that live with us on a daily basis. In my effort to gain an understanding of how the rest of the world perceives this book, I did an ISI Web of Knowledge search of the number of scientists who have referred to this book, which was published in 1962. The search compared Roseburys text with what I considered another classic text, written in the same era, Bacterial and Mycotic Infections in Man, by Renée Dubos (Dubos and Hirsch, 1965). It was of interest to find that, since the 1990s, Roseburys book was referenced at a rate of ten to one, compared with the Dubos classic. I would suggest reading both. CONCLUSIONS The Rosebury story reinforces my belief that we can always count on the fact that the "head is connected to the rest of the body", and therefore that research related to the oral cavity has to be of equal or greater significance than research related to many other parts of the body. Thus, the research we do, if done in a thorough and comprehensive manner, should be of value to science that extends far beyond the oral cavity. Rosebury was a firm believer in that principle. He also believed in learning as you go, or, put differently, that a person should never stop learning and should continue to push him or herself beyond the boundaries of his/her current comfort zone. In addition, his experience at Fort Detrick taught him the value of multidisciplinary research, a lesson we still need to put into practice. At the heart of Roseburys experiments were the constant interchanges between animal models and clinical observations, always balancing the two to come to the most erudite conclusion. The lessons learned from a man of his stature, dedicated to the pursuit of science and knowledge, provide us with an example of a skilled individual who never lost sight of his goal. His scientific pursuits have made contributions that are still useful to a new generation of scientists, who, although they may never have heard his name, nevertheless benefit from his work and the work of the people he trained. I consider it to have been a privilege to have met him and to have been asked to write this article in his memory.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I especially thank Celia Rosebury Lighthill for providing the photographs from her personal collection, and for her helpful suggestions and input, without which the article could not have been written. I also thank Dr. Walter Loesche and Dr. Barnet Levy, for permitting me to use their stories as part of the text of this article. Thanks also to Dr. Solon A. Ellison for his contributions, and to Dr. Irwin Mandel and Dr. Martin Taubman for their encouragement. I also extend my appreciation to the librarians at the UMDNJ library services, for their help in uncovering documents that are cited in the text. Received for publication June 20, 2006. Revision received September 11, 2006. Accepted for publication September 14, 2006. REFERENCES
Journal of Dental Research, Vol. 85, No. 11,
990-995 (2006) This article has been cited by other articles:
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