Viruses - Bacteriophages

One of the chapters in Pranay Lal’s Invisible Empire starts with these lines:

“Say the word ‘virus’ and the first thought that comes to the mind is of the diseases they cause.”

But they can also be the cure for some diseases, he writes.

 

The Britisher, Ernest Hankin, was sent to India. His job was to “protect British troops from infectious diseases”. Like cholera. By 1894, he was curious about the Maagh Mela in Allahabad, on the banks of the Ganga. Over 3 million devotees arrived every day during that festival. He inspected the waters during this period:

“There was very little bacterial contamination of their waters despite the multitudes of people and their cattle bathing in them, discarding their waste and burning corpses along their banks.”

By 1895, he had written a paper that the Ganga was cleaner than most British or European rivers , “despite the way they were treated”. He wondered why that was the case, how the Ganga managed to avoid the decay seen in European rivers.

 

When Mark Twain visited India, he met Hankin and wrote the following lines:

“It had long been noted as a strange thing that while Benares is often afflicted with the cholera, she does not spread it beyond her borders. This could not be accounted for.”

Twain mentioned what Hankin had measured and found:

“He (Hankin) got water at the mouth of the sewers where they empty into the river at the bathing ghats; a cubic centimeter of it contained millions of cholera germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead.”

Hankin was very scientific, wrote Twain:

“He caught a floating corpse, towed it to the shore, and from beside it he dipped up water that was swarming with cholera germs; at the end of six hours they were all dead.”

Next:

“(Hankin) added swarm after swarm of cholera germs to this water; within the six hours they always died.”

 

Being a scientific man, Hankin didn’t buy into the mythical explanations of the curative powers of the Ganga. Instead, he wondered if the Ganga possessed some antibacterial properties? But Hankin didn’t have any answers, or proof, of what might be killing the bacteria. Until 1912, though many scientists found other scenarios where “something” so tiny that it could pass through antibacterial filters seemed to kill bacteria, nobody took the thought process to its logical end. Then in 1912, Felix d’Herelle postulated that the “something” were viruses, and labelled them bacteriophages – “eaters of bacteria”.

 

You must be wondering if bacteriophages are real (they are), then why haven’t they been used as cure/prevention to bacterial diseases? Ah, that’s a story for another blog…