Microbiology and Immunology

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Dd’Hérelle, Félix ’HÉRELLE, FÉLIX(1873-1949)

Canadian bacteriologist

Félix d’Hérelle’s major contribution to science was the dis-

covery of the bacteriophage, a microscopic agent that appears

in conjunction with and destroys disease-producing bacteriain

a living organism. Like many researchers, d’Hérelle spent

much of his life exploring the effects of his major discovery.

He was also well-traveled; in the course of his life he lived for

long or short periods of time in Canada, France, the

Netherlands, Guatemala, Mexico, Indochina, Egypt, India, the

United States, and the former Soviet Union.

D’Hérelle was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His

father, Félix d’Hérelle—a member of a well-established

French Canadian family, died when the young Félix was six

years old. After his father’s death, he moved with his mother,

Augustine Meert d’Hérelle, a Dutch woman, to Paris, France.

In Paris, d’Hérelle received his secondary education at the

Lycée Louis-le-Grand and began his medical studies. He com-

pleted his medical program at the University of Leiden in the

Netherlands. He married Mary Kerr, of France, in 1893, and

the couple eventually had two daughters. In 1901, d’Hérelle

moved to Guatemala City, Guatemala, to become the director

of the bacteriology laboratory at the general hospital and to

teach microbiology at the local medical school. In 1907, he

moved to Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, to study the fermentation

of sisal hemp, and in 1908, the Mexican government sent him

back to Paris to further his microbiological studies. D’Hérelle

became an assistant at Paris’s Pasteur Institute in 1909,

became chief of its laboratory in 1914, and remained at the

Institute until 1921.

During his time at the Pasteur Institute, d’Hérelle stud-

ied a bacterium called Coccobacillus acridiorum, which

caused enteritis (inflammationof the intestines) in locusts and

grasshoppers of the acrididae family of insects, with a view

toward using the microbe to destroy locusts. In growing the

bacteria on cultureplates, d’Hérelle observed empty spots on

the plates and theorized that these spots resulted from a virus

that grew along with and killed the bacteria. He surmised that

this phenomenon might have great medical significance as an

example of an organism fighting diseases of the digestive

tract. In 1916, he extended his investigation to cultures of the

bacillus that caused dysenteryand again observed spots free

of the microbe on the surface of the cultures. He was able to

filter out a substance from the feces of dysentery victims that

consumed in a few hours a culture broth of the bacillus. On

September 10, 1917, he presented to the French Academy of

Sciences a paper announcing his discovery entitled “Sur un

microbe invisible, antagoniste du bacille dysentérique.” He

named the bacteria–destroying substance bacteriophage (liter-

ally, “eater of bacteria”). He devoted most of his research and

writing for the rest of his life to the various types of bacterio-

phage which appeared in conjunction with specific types of

bacteria. He published several books dealing with his findings.

From 1920 to the late 1930s, d’Hérelle traveled and

lived in many parts of the world. In 1920, he went to French

Indochina under the auspices of the Pasteur Institute to study

human dysentery and septic pleuropneumonia in buffaloes. It

was during the course of this expedition that he perfected his

techniques for isolating bacteriophage. From 1922 to 1923, he

served as an assistant professor at the University of Leiden. In

1924, he moved to Alexandria, Egypt, to direct the

Bacteriological Service of the Egyptian Council on Health and

Quarantine. In 1927, he went to India at the invitation of the

Indian Medical Service to attempt to cure cholera through the

use of the bacteriophage associated with that disease.

D’Hérelle served as professor of bacteriology at Yale

University from 1928 to 1933, and in 1935 the government of

the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia requested that

d’Hérelle establish institutes dedicated to the study of bacte-

riophage in Tiflis, Kiev, and Kharkov. However, unstable civil

conditions forced d’Hérelle’s departure from the Soviet Union

in 1937, and he returned to Paris, where he lived, continuing

his study of bacteriophage, for the remainder of his life.

D’Hérelle attempted to make use of bacteriophage in

the treatment of many human and animal diseases, including

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