Félix Hubert d'Herelle (1873–1949): History of a scientific mind

ABSTRACT

The discovery of bacteriophage one century ago by the French-Canadian Félix d'Herelle set off controversies as to the nature of bacteriophage as well as over the priority and credit for this discovery. The background and life of d'Herelle reveals a complex, self-taught outsider in science who was strongly influenced by his admiration of Louis Pasteur, but also his attachment to the philosophical positions of early 17th century philosophers, especially Francis Bacon. D'Herelle left substantial unpublished writings on his philosophical musings toward the end of his life.

KEYWORDS:

• biography
• d'Herelle
• discovery
• history
• philosophy

Just 100 years ago, 10 September 1917, Félix Hubert d'Herelle, age 44, published a brief note in the prestigious Comptes rendus de l'Academie des sciences in which he described a new kind of microbe, in his words, “an obligate intracellular parasite” of bacteria.¹ This discovery would catapult this struggling, almost middle-aged, high school dropout microbiologist to international fame, honorary degrees, candidacy for a Noble Prize, and a century-long controversial reputation (Figure 1).

D'Herelle's short note in the Comptes rendus in 1917 truly represents what can be recognized as the discovery of bacteriophage. While an earlier report in 1915 by F.W. Twort² certainly described a phenomenon, called “glassy transformation” (of bacterial colonies on agar) and “transmissible lysis,” that was caused by bacteriophage in his cultures, Twort failed to interpret his observations in a way that encompassed the concept of virus, of intracellular parasitism, or of serial reproduction of an infectious agent, all of which d'Herelle proposed with clarity and experimental support in his short first note of 1917. If, as Thomas Kuhn has noted, discovery involves more than an observation of a fact of nature,³ the credit for the discovery of phage must certainly be awarded to Félix d'Herelle.

In addition to his published work, mostly on bacteriophage, he left behind 2 remarkable unpublished works that provide insights into the life and mind of this remarkable individual. One manuscript of over 700 typed pages is a personal memoir, Les pérégrinations d'un microbiologiste or “Wanderings of a Microbiologist,”⁴ an account of his life as it relates to his world-wide travels in search of adventure, experience, and opportunities to study microbes in their natural habitat. The second work is a 3 volume manuscript setting out d'Herelle's philosophical views of science (and many other topics as well). He gave it the title La Valeur de l'Expérience: Essai de l'Expérimentalisme or “The value of experience: an essay on experimentalism.”⁵ It is a bit more than an essay in that it, too, runs to over 700 typed pages. Recent scholarship,^6,7,8,9 has shed light on the scientific work and professional growth of this unusual outsider whose insights and technical acumen initiated a century of remarkable research on phages, but less attention has been given to his deep philosophical and intellectual commitments that influenced many if not all of his successes and failures.

In his early years, d'Herelle seemed to have been thrown onto his own resources and must have developed the habits of self-education, independence and, at times, over-confidence, that characterized his mature scientific life. Documentary history suggests that even his place of birth seemed to be uncertain: in his memoir, Les Peregrinations, and in official government documents such as his passports and war-time identity cards, he claimed Canada as his native land. However, a recent birth certificate uncovered by Alain Dublancet indicates that he was born in Paris.¹⁰ This document gives his name as Hubert Augustin Félix Haerens, his mother's family name. Indeed, his first publication in January 1899 in a provincial Quebec weekly newspaper was signed “F. Hoerens.”¹¹ Later that year, however, Félix and his brother Daniel, using the surname “Haerens d'Herelle,” bought land in Longueuil, a suburb of Montreal on which to construct “The Herelle Chocolate Works.” The next year, when he was in financial trouble, he was identified in legal papers as “Hubert (Félix) Haerens d'Herelle (chimiste).” By 1901, at age 28, he had settled on what became his final name, “Félix d'Herelle.”¹²

Already married to a pregnant, 15-year-old Marie Caire in Istanboul in July 1893, d'Herelle joined the French military for a 4-year tour of duty, but a year later decided that the life of a soldier was not for him; his military record lists desertion in November 1894.¹⁰ In 1897 young Félix returned to Canada where he decided

it was time for me to make some choices: the conclusion was that it was wiser to return to the country where I was born [sic], and then I would see what happened. I was, moreover, always thinking about bacteriology, so on my arrival I set up a laboratory and began to experiment, all alone because at this time there were only 2 French Canadians who were interested in microbes, Dr. Bernier, who was later the first professor in this subject at the University of Montreal and myself. (ref. 4 p. 38bis)

Except for his mention of attending a course of lectures in Bonn in the fall of 1891, at age 18, and “a few summer courses in Europe” (ref. 4 p. 51) in the late 1890s, d'Herelle seemed to have had little formal education in bacteriology or anything else for that matter.

One thing that strikes his biographer immediately is d'Herelle's singular lack of worry over personal financial matters. His mother, the daughter of an estate manager in Holland, though apparently unmarried, seemed financially well off. His only mention of money in his entire memoir was on the occasion of his summer bicycle excursion through rural France and Belgium in the summer of his 16^th year for which his mother gave him 1000 French francs. A thousand francs, at that time, was the yearly wage of a French day laborer. The next year his mother provided him with 3000 francs for a holiday excursion to South America. Later she would capitalize the construction of the Montreal chocolate factory as well. One possible explanation is hinted in his autobiographical memoir: his father was an important man in Quebec government and society. D'Herelle refers to a younger brother, Daniel, on several occasions and they were partners in the chocolate factory. Since his mother had 2 children, likely by the same father, a rather stable relationship is implied, but for the sake of propriety, a confinement in far-off Paris, would make things much easier in Montreal where his elderly father had a reputation, and maybe even legitimate offspring. His father was born in Canada and was in the liberal political circle of the Quebec leader, Sir Henri Gustave Joly de Lotbinière, still tied to the vestigial seigneurial system of New France. It was Sir Henri who provided young Félix with his first professional opportunity as a microbiologist. A recent glut of Canadian maple syrup suggested a potential market if the syrup could be fermented into an alcoholic beverage. The Quebec government provided d'Herelle with a commission to investigate the feasibility of making maple “whiskey” to sell in the United States.¹³

As d'Herelle later described, this was his first step in his life plan to follow in the path of that secular saint of France, Louis Pasteur. In his intellectual development, d'Herelle exhibited 2 clear influences: the Pasteurian pathway, and Baconian philosophy. Each influence he interpreted in his own way.

It is tempting to speculate that in the absence of formal education beyond the Lycée, he adopted the views of the French thinkers he most likely met in a traditional French education. He was an avowed anti-Thomist, and his frequent references to Malebranche, and others of Descartes' circle suggests he was well acquainted with the French thinkers who had revolutionized natural philosophy in the 17^th century. However, it was Francis Bacon who was most central to d'Herelle's mind as a scientist. As he recounted, “As a young man, an idea haunted me, logic, so I sought a master among logicians; I became attracted to Francis Bacon, I endeavored to penetrate his thoughts, if often veiled, to impregnate myself with the Baconian spirit.” (ref. 5, vol. I, p. 5) “I sought the path I needed to follow: the motto of this chapter [‘One who does not begin with the study of the human mind will never be able to understand nature: all will be for him illusion and inextricable error’]¹ is the response he made to me.” (ref. 5 vol.I, p.6) Indeed, d'Herelle's attachment to logic, sometimes to the neglect of the messiness of experimental results, would characterize some of his most acrimonious scientific debates. His most famous dispute over the priority for discovery of phage with F.W. Twort² hinged at one point on the technical distinction between the terms lysis and clysis; dissolution versus fragmentation as applied to the fate of the phage-infected bacterium. On the other hand, his devotion to Baconianism and its focus on experimentation before theorizing, provided him with an adventurous spirit unfettered by ponderous prior learning. But he was, indeed, a master theorizer: almost always ready to propose new ways to think of natural phenomena: phage as agents of natural immunity; phage as colloids leading to the replacement of the cell theory of life with the colloid theory of life, just to name a few of his most well-developed theories, with a book on each of them.^14,15

His 3-volume summary of his mature philosophy, written during his confinement in Vichy during the occupation of WW2 and finished in 1946, starts with a long discussion of behaviorism and experimental psychology. Starting with Plato and running to Bergson, it is John B. Watson, the American founder of psychological behaviorism, whom d'Herelle admires most for his experimental approach to the science of the human mind. But again, logic creeps in with d'Herelle's early chapter on “The axiomatic basis of psychology” starting with a discussion of the behavior of diatoms and planaria. His “3 axioms” are 1) memory is a biological phenomenon of general order, 2) memory consists of fixing sensations in the substance of the living being in the form of memories, thus fixing the reaction, and 3) memory implies the notion of time (ref. 5, vol.I, p.9). From these 3 axioms, he proceeds to work his way up the tree of life to deduce various autonomic and learned responses, and eventually, he hopes, to understand the human mind, itself. One sees a thinker at work who is fearless. No problem is too big or too daunting. All one needs are a bit of clear thought and logic, with Bacon always at one's side.

The other major intellectual influence in d'Herelle's life was Louis Pasteur, perhaps because in late 19^th century France, he was, simply, everyone's hero.¹⁶ Here d'Herelle was more explicit:

Hunting microbes appeared to me as the last adventure in a standardized world: for a microbiologist, I took Pasteur as a model. Perhaps, I said to myself then, he had the mental training, imposed by circumstances, that played a role in the acquisition of his “microbiological mind” and therefore I should follow the same path. He [Pasteur] started with chemistry, then came the study of fermentations, then on to an insect disease, then first the study of the rampant diseases of vertebrates and, finally human diseases. For 50 years, as my publications show, I followed this path with a detour imposed by circumstances, the study of a fungal disease of a plant, coffee. I think the method was good way to acquire a “pasteurian spirit.” (ref. 5, vol.I, pp.5–6)

Indeed, it was d'Herelle's initial interest in alcoholic fermentation of sisal residue in Mexico that gave him the opportunity to study insect diseases. It was his insight that an insect pathogen might be a way to control locusts; for good reason, d'Herelle is remembered as the “father of biological pest control” among insect pathologists. (ref. 13, p. 45) An incidental observation of spotty lysis of agar cultures of these insect pathogens led the ever-observant d'Herelle to extend his idea of epizootics even unto parasites of bacteria.

Almost a congenital contrarian who was always thinking of alternate hypotheses, d'Herelle sought an explanation for the unusual virulence of an outbreak of dysentery during WW1 while he was working at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He speculated that the dysentery organism was acting in concert with another unknown factor, much like had been postulated in the case of hog cholera over a decade earlier. This idea (later debunked) led him to the strange and now incomprehensible procedure that led to his filtering and reconstituting cultures of dysentery bacilli from these soldiers, whereby he discovered bacteriophage.¹⁷ Again, he clearly reasoned out the nature of phage in his first brilliant paper on “an obligate intracellular parasite of bacteria” in 1917.

Close analysis of d'Herelle's writings, both published and unpublished, cannot but lead one to the conclusion that he was supremely self-confident in his own judgements. How did he develop such a personality and habits of mind? Was it because he was thrust into experiences that required resilience and independence at a very early age? Was it a brilliant mind steeped in traditional French 19^th century thought? Was he just “naturally” curious and hungry for “experience”? Whatever the origins of his mind, he saw science at its best as a way for a better future. Three years before his death in 1949, he wrote:

To realize a new equilibrium, myths and what they engender must disappear; it is necessary that the field of experience is extended to all that is human, because under its aegis all the power of hope and well-being quickly become realities: the past meets the future. But to achieve this we must understand what is the deeper meaning of experience, understand why it is, and always will be, the only infallible guide to understand what is the value of experience. (ref. 5, vol.1., p.3)

Figure 1. Félix d'Herelle and collaborators, about 1919, probably at the Pasteur Institute, Paris. From collection of the author.

Notes

¹ d'Herelle cites Francis Bacon, De Interpretatione Naturae [sic] XII, sec 7, but I have been unable to verify this citation. This work does not have 12 parts, nor does it appear to have the text d'Herelle quotes in French. He may have been working from a variant translation (Italian or Latin?) or another author entirely.

² While the priority dispute involved the work of Twort and d'Herelle, the main advocate of Twort's priority was Jules Bordet and his protégé, Andre Gratia from the Pasteur Institute in Brussels. Bordet and his group did not claim priority for themselves, but rather sought to advance Twort's work as a way to undermine d'Herelle, who was viewed with suspicion and distaste by the Brussels group. Twort himself played a minor role in this controversy. (ref 13, pp. 60–81)