Department of Bacteriology (1929 - 1965)

The Department of Bacteriology at the University of Melbourne dates from 1929 and a Chair in Bacteriology from 1934.

The Department became the School of Microbiology when it moved into new premises near the corner of Royal Parade and Grattan St. in 1965.

The rationale for this name change was that bacteriology had two sections - the department on campus and a sub-department at the Austin Hospital.

• Bacteriology Department

The establishment of the study and teaching of bacteriology at the University of Melbourne was driven by the impact of public health problems, both medical and veterinary, on the city of Melbourne.

The enormous expansion of the economy and of the population of Melbourne in the decades following the discovery of gold had occurred without adequate provision of pure water or waste management. "Marvellous Melbourne" had become "Marvellous Smellbourne", and typhoid and other diseases now known to be infectious were rife.

Issues of waste and water management came to a head during the Royal Commission into the Sanitary State of Melbourne, which issued its final report in 1891. During the Commission's hearings, Auguste de Bavay who had trained in bacteriology in Europe and who was researching and controlling the fermentative yeasts for a Melbourne brewery, caused a furore when he claimed to have isolated the causative organism of typhoid from Melbourne's water supply This was highly embarrassing for the water suppliers, the government, and the Royal Commission itself, which had not acted on a suggestion from a witness that the water supply from Yan Yean reservoir be properly examined.

A bacteriologist from Sydney, Oscar Katz, was brought to Melbourne to investigate the claims of de Bavay, In a newspaper illustriation of the time a man, almost certainly Katz, is shown at work in Allen's Department of Pathology, possibly the first bacteriological work at the University. He was unable to disprove the claims but was also unable to find evidence of typhoid.

After the Royal Commission, Allen travelled to Britain and Europe investigating further some of the issues raised by it. On his return, he wrote a series of reports for the Victorian Government, in one of which he recommended the establishment of a Bacteriological Institution to handle both investigative work and teaching of the discipline. The State Government, burdened with the effects of a serious financial slump and the demands of the infant Board of Works established to combat some of the sanitary deficiencies, declined to act.

In the meantime, Allen himself had acted, appointing to his Pathology Department staff, the very able Dr Thomas Cherry, a mature age University of Melbourne medical graduate with a strong interest in bacteriology.

(Note: This entry was written with the assistance of Dr Joc Forsyth.)

Previous and Subsequent Entities

 1929 - 1965 Department of Bacteriology
       1965 - 1996 School of Microbiology
             1996 - Department of Microbiology and Immunology

Faculty

• Faculty of Medicine, The University of Melbourne (1876 - 1989)