Alvin B. Hoerlein Oral History Alvin B. Hoerlein, Interviewee Dennis Maguire, Interviewer July 29, 1982 Part I Dennis Maguire: Today is July 29, 1982. My name is Dennis Maguire. I am talking with Professor Alvin B. Hoerlein in the conference room of the Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Dr. Hoerlein is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at Colorado State University. Why don't we begin by telling me a little bit about your early life, where you grew up, about your parents. Alvin Hoerlein: Born in Ft. Collins. While we lived in Ft. Collins, I spent summers on the farms. When it looked like I could go to college, I finally decided on veterinary medicine, which was the best thing I ever did. Dennis Maguire: Anything lead up to that decision? Alvin Hoerlein: No, not really. I didn't... I never met a veterinarian, until I talked to Dean Newsom. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) So, would you say that Newsom had a pretty good influence on you? Alvin Hoerlein: Well, Newsom was a fine gentleman, of course. And, all of the many instructors at that time, five or six, had an influence. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: But the college was very small. Dr. Farquharson, undoubtedly, had the largest influence on me, in many ways. He was an excellent teacher. You wouldn't be able to use his form of teaching or discipline now, I'm sure. He was a hard man, but he was very knowledgeable, and a terrific surgeon. I was there when he did his first abdominal surgery on a horse, which had never been done before, by anybody. It'd been tried in Europe. It was mostly postmortem reports. Dennis Maguire: Is that the aseptic type of surgery? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. Peritoneal cavity of horse is very susceptible to infection and he pulled it off in a box stall, straw in the floor. He and Dr. Smith, Kenny. But, he taught us many things about asepsis. I've not done very much surgery since I left school. But, I've done a lot of work with infectious diseases, some of them dangerous.
And, I think that he taught me many things about asepsis that probably kept me from getting infected. Dr. Bourne was a wonderful man, a wonderful teacher, with almost no laboratory facilities. Dr. Smith, of course, was a terrific surgeon, as he is today. Gassner was exacting. We had him the first year he taught histology. Dennis Maguire: Was he a friendly man? Alvin Hoerlein: Beg your pardon. Dennis Maguire: Was Gassner a friendly type of person? Alvin Hoerlein: Not really. He was competent in many things. I did lab work for him for a few years. He wasn't unfriendly. He was exacting. He expected beautiful drawings of these sections. We spent a lot of time there. Dr. Davis came in the second year of my anatomy. Dr. St. Clair was the first year instructor in anatomy. Dr. Deem was in microbiology. He undoubtedly influenced me a great deal. I went on with that. That's about the staff, the teaching staff, I guess. Dennis Maguire: Could you tell me a little about Dr. Deem? Alvin Hoerlein: He was very competent man. He was a good teacher and a very good friend. I painted his house inside and out, things like that. We used to go fishing together once in a while. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: I guess that's really the staff, at that time, when I came in, Harry Johnson came a year or two later in large animal. Dennis Maguire: You were getting a good deal, as far as faculty members were concerned. Alvin Hoerlein: I got a good education. I went to Cornell after I stayed on a year. Deem went off to get a masters at Ohio State, so I took his place for a year. Though, when I got to Cornell, which was the most noted of all the veterinary colleges at that time. They just stood by themselves. It was a real pedestal. I didn't have to apologize for CSU or A&M, no way. Which I think, is a good indication that we did get good instruction. That was a different day, I don't know if there were 30 in my class, you probably know that. Even with a small faculty, I guess I knew the whole faculty the first day that I got into the anatomy lab. A little different than now. But, we got to know all of them very well. And, they were able to try to teach us something, because there weren't that many students. Dr. Harshfield was on the staff there, a pathologist. I worked for him later, up in South Dakota. Dennis Maguire: What were the facilities like? Were they...
Alvin Hoerlein: They were good. Dennis Maguire: They were good. Alvin Hoerlein: We moved into the new veterinary building, across from the administration building. You know which building I mean. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: In the Christmas vacation of ‘39, really, I graduated in ‘40. Students moved everything but the big safe, they wouldn't let us do that. Dennis Maguire: Where were you before that? Alvin Hoerlein: Over where the bulletin room is. Dennis Maguire: No. Oh, the press. Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. That was our so called building. And of course, the hospital was in gear all the time I was in school. The old hospital. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: Just a nucleus of what you see now. Dennis Maguire: Did you have any old equipment, like sterilizers... Alvin Hoerlein: We had sterilizers, of course, when you taught bacteriology. The equipment was crude. Fortunately, I used to wash laboratory glassware, which now they do in a machine, but I got 30 cents an hour for it. So, nothing is all bad. Dennis Maguire: The equipment was adequate for the time? Alvin Hoerlein: It was adequate for the time. It was certainly not super, but we had good microscopes. The necessary things, we had. Of course, it was quite a different time than now. Most of the things we have now, hadn’t even been dreamt of then. Dennis Maguire: Yeah. Alvin Hoerlein: We're talking about 40 years ago, or more than that. Dennis Maguire: Okay. Did the veterinary students get to do much in the way of socializing? Alvin Hoerlein: Well, some did. Nobody had any money. But, it didn't take much money. White Palace hamburgers were a nickel. Six for a quarter.
Dennis Maguire: Wow. Alvin Hoerlein: They were pretty good. They were pretty good. They were better than... you can remember McDonalds 19 cent hamburgers maybe. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: They were better than that. But, students didn't have any money. They mostly didn't have cars. I lived at home, so I had the use of a car. There were some students in fraternities, not many, of course they were all men, or boys. We had a few junior AVMA picnics and things like that. Dennis Maguire: Did you ever have a smoker? Alvin Hoerlein: With lots of beer! Dennis Maguire: (laughter) Those weren't... Alvin Hoerlein: Didn't have a smoker, really as such. But, we did have some things that might be similar. I don't remember whether if they had refreshments with those meetings or not. We had junior AVMA meetings, I think every week. They were well attended. The feature program of the year was always Dr. Bourne doing hypnotism. And he was very good at this. Dennis Maguire: Were the... Well, let's see. How about technical society. Phi Zeta or whatever. Alvin Hoerlein: Alpha Psi was the honorary veterinary fraternity, which had an initiation, I guess, every year, was all. Dennis Maguire: That's all? You didn't really do much else? Alvin Hoerlein: Phi Kappa Phi didn't do anything either, except have a... Alpha Psi used to present a cup to the sophomore having the highest average. They did that every year. Dennis Maguire: The standards that were, let's say, listed in the bulletin for Alpha Psi, really weren't adhered to? Alvin Hoerlein: I don't know what was listed in the bulletin. But goals were always more lofty than... this is true in Phi Kappa Phi. At that time, I don't think they sponsored a speaker or anything like that. Dennis Maguire: You read papers at the technical society, is that right? Alvin Hoerlein: Usually had a speaker. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative)
A student or like a guest? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah, usually one of the staff or might've been an upperclassman. Usually staff, I think. But, not necessarily veterinary staff. Could've been from some of their discipline. Dennis Maguire: Okay. So, you've told me that you took Arthur Deem’s place for a year. Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. Dennis Maguire: And then went to Cornell. Alvin Hoerlein: Went to Cornell. Dennis Maguire: You also did instruction work there, didn't you? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. I instructed veterinary bacteriology and immunology. And also had a class of mostly girls that were bacteriology majors from the agriculture college. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: I think that was just one semester a year. Pretty sure of that. Dennis Maguire: Was the instructorship of... Was that offered to graduate students? Alvin Hoerlein: Veterinary microbiology or bacteriology, which it was then. I taught lab. I did not teach a lecture, except on occasion. But, for the girls, the bacteriology majors, I taught lecture and lab. Made me study. Dennis Maguire: Yeah. What was your graduate work? Alvin Hoerlein: My problem was dermatophytosis or ringworm. I guess I was the first one in the country to culture, cultivate the cause of agent ringworm in cattle. You could see it but it happens to be one that's a real slow grower. It took me a long time to find that out. Also, worked with cats and dogs and horses. That was the... my research work there, minor in pathology. Dennis Maguire: That was a lot of overlap between pathology and microbiology. What do you consider yourself? A pathologist or microbiologist? Or both? Alvin Hoerlein: Um, neither really. I've done almost all of my work in infectious diseases, which, you got to be both. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: So, you're probably not very good at either. It also involves a certain amount of clinical work. In investigating, much of my investigation work has been in the
field, where the problems have been, bring them into the lab, and go back out to the field, and test them. Dennis Maguire: Sounds like your veterinary training really prepared you for all aspects... Alvin Hoerlein: I've had good training. I don't know as much as I'd like to, of course. I've not done the things a practitioner does. So, I've been able to work intensively in rather narrow fields, perhaps. Dennis Maguire: You moved on to South Dakota State College in 1945. Alvin Hoerlein: That was my first job after I got my PhD degree. I worked with Dr. Harshfield up there, and a lot of this was field work. The philosophy in the department changed when Harshfield went up there. And there had been, there was some problems with public relations, so I got all over the state. I worked on a variety of problems. I guess I didn't solve anything, really. Dennis Maguire: Was Harshfield some kind of a big cheese up there at South Dakota? Alvin Hoerlein: He was the head of the department, which now is quite a large department. There was really four of us there then, including the extension veterinarian. Dennis Maguire: Yeah. Alvin Hoerlein: So, it was quite small. And our efforts were quite small. We worked with the state veterinarian and his staff quite a bit. Dennis Maguire: You said he changed the philosophical direction up there, towards field work? Alvin Hoerlein: Towards work. Dennis Maguire: Oh. (laughter) Alvin Hoerlein: The old gentleman, who had been there for many years, taught a class to ag students in whatever, disease or anatomy physiology, this type of thing. And, that's about all they did. Poisoned a few chickens, and the extension veterinarian was not very active when I was up there. He was... had already had many years of "service." So, he was… and the department was in disrepute around the state. So, this was what we were trying to do. To enhance our... enhance the feeling that the people had about the department, and provide more service. We did increase our diagnostic service a great deal, and after I left, they increased it and they have quite a department now. Very good diagnostic lab. Iowa State, my primary problem was swine brucellosis, and I had an excellent field veterinarian that helped me. We were able to develop the first official program for the control of swine brucellosis, a state program. And it is now the
national validated swine brucellosis program. Almost, word for word. We field tested it. And, found out a great deal about it. When I came to... went to Iowa State, there were about a thousand cases of human brucellosis a year. 90% of them, swine origin. When I left, there were about a hundred. So, that was one of the nicest things I've ever done. Like I was saying, probably the lessons I learned from Farquharson, told me not to wipe my eyes and things, because I'm the only one I guess, that's done any extensive work with brucellosis and didn't catch it, any antibodies at all. This was a hazard in taking on that project, because in those days, it knocked you out for two years. Dennis Maguire: Wow. Alvin Hoerlein: Not much of a fatality, 5%, but you just couldn't work. And, of course, this was a terrible thing with the young farmers in Iowa and southern Minnesota, and Illinois and northern Missouri, eastern Nebraska. You know that's kind of the what was corn belt then. They'd be 30‐35, they'd get brucellosis, they've just barely got a finger hold on the farm and four or five kids. And, if they didn't have a family, a bunch of brothers, a family that could do the farming for two years, they lost the farm. Miserable! Now, the antibiotics are quite effective in treating it. It's still difficult to diagnose in man. Dennis Maguire: There are a lot of other diseases that are communicable between animal and man. Alvin Hoerlein: Many. This is one of the most common, I guess, in this country. And, it can be contracted from cattle or goats or swine. In New York State, if you had brucellosis, you got it from cows, because about 90% of the cases were from cows. But, there weren't as many as in the corn belt states. And, worked with other swine diseases at Iowa State. Transmissible gastroenteritis in baby pigs showed about them while I was there. We played with it a little. Found out a lot about it. Other people were doing the same thing through all the swine states. That's one you can diagnose over the phone. They all died, baby pigs, first week. Makes you cry to see a farrowing house with a pile of baby pigs this high. But, that was a new one then. It's... We know how to handle it better now. We've learned some things. But, the virus is still studied, vaccines tried, but not very successfully. At Nebraska, mostly, I worked the first couple years with baby pigs, did some work in the immunology of baby pigs and association with colostrum. Which is an interesting piece of work. Had I been smart enough, I could've gotten into the thing that happens in babies with... I can't think of the name of the condition. It's well understood now, and they give gamma globulin to the mother, the RH problem with babies. They've learned how to block that with essentially the same things we found out in baby pigs. We also, while I was at Nebraska, developed a method, which we use, probably not the best method, which we used for several years to get disease free, colostrum deprived baby pigs. Baby pigs will die if they don't get colostrum,
unless you can get them out of a pig environment. We learned to do that. We used a method a little different than we used later on, when I was there. Turned over the University of Nebraska herd to a disease free herd. And, started my work with shipping fever in cattle there, which I continued at the University of Illinois. And, we've done some work with it here. We still don't have that solved, we did find evidence of PI3 virus. When I was there at Illinois, I had frozen blood samples from Nebraska and Illinois, that we knew a great deal about. And, demonstrated that calves commonly go through Parainfluenza Virus 3 infections in the first week or two in the feed lot. A vaccine has been developed, against that. It really hasn't changed, the shipping fever picture, as much as we hoped it might. We thought maybe we had the basic cause. Dennis Maguire: Did you help develop the vaccine? Alvin Hoerlein: We developed the first one, used it one year. But then it was developed commercially after that. And a better vaccine really than we had used. So we could prevent infection, but we didn't change the disease very much. The disease is a complex disease. Illinois, well I guess we continued to work on shipping fever there and a few other things. None of great note, I guess. But, again I did a lot of field work with the shipping fever and project. I got more data than anything else. And, in ‘59 I came to CSU. I didn't teach the first couple years, first three or four, five, I don't know. I really was brought here. Dr. Deem called me and wanted to know if I wanted to work on vibriosis. I knew how to spell vibriosis. Dennis Maguire: Do I? (laughter) Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. You have it spelled correctly in the app. I didn't know much about it. I had not worked with reproductive disease in cattle and so, we talked it over and I came to Colorado. I had some other things here. My mother and sister were here. They needed somebody closer. Colorado is a nice place to be. I thought it was a good place for my boys to grow up. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Was this Harold Dean or Arthur W Deem? Alvin Hoerlein: Deem. Arthur Dennis Maguire: Okay. Alvin Hoerlein: He was head of the department. Vibriosis research was very productive, very interesting. I drove thousands of miles around the state and surrounding the states. We were able to learn. A lot of work had already been done with vibriosis. We weren't all that new on it, but we developed diagnostic capability of, so we can find out how much we had. We had much more than we ever thought. It had been diagnosed here before.
John Holtorf, his name may come up again. He's a friend of the colleges. There's probably a picture of him in the hall some place. He lived next to a rancher, over in the Wray area, Yuma area. Really Sterling is closer, I guess. Over in that area anyway. His neighbor had vibriosis, been diagnosed. And he stimulated research here and got a line item budget item through the legislature to support it. John's always been a friend of the college, especially when he was on the state board for many years. But, he was very interested in this personally. So, we learned a great deal about the disease itself. This was with cooperation, especially of Dr. Carroll, at the Bull Farm and Dr. Ball. The most of the help I had was from Dr. Carroll. He was an expert in the diagnosis of pregnancy, which was important to all of our studies. He knew a lot about cattle. I learned a lot about cattle. And the... We learned a lot about the natural disease. We just studied more animals than anybody had ever studied before. And, most of the previous studies had been in dairy cattle, where the husbandry is quite different. And this was all in... not all in beef cattle but mostly in beef cattle. So, that worked out very well, and we were able to... (silence) It was the first vaccine for vibriosis, ever been developed. We got a patent on it, which is very difficult to get anything patented in the area of biologics. Dennis Maguire: So, that was with Doctors Carroll and Ball? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah, they're the ones that helped me most. They were out at the Bull Farm. Dr. Kramer, as graduate student, worked in the lab with me. And, he went out and froze his butt a lot of mornings when I did, out at our farm. It was a big project over about a five year period, we had over 1200 head of cattle, of our own. Now, this was [Inaudible 00:33:10] cattle, so there was reasonable salvage, but that gets to be a lot. You get about 80 or 90 per experiment. Toward the end of that period, we got some help from a commercial laboratory to finance it. The vaccine is an excellent vaccine. Dennis Maguire: What year was the vaccine finally? Alvin Hoerlein: It was released for use, I think in ‘65. I'm not sure of that date. I believe that's about right. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Did you get Experiment Station funds for that project? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. Dr. Wheeler, who was director of the Experiment Station was very helpful. Rue Jensen, of course, everything at CSU revolves around him in research. We're talking about the golden age of research for veterinary medicine at CSU. And, this started really before I came. Of course they'd done some research. Dean Newsom and Dean Cross had done research for many years. But, in a very limited basis really. They didn't have much money. There wasn't very much
going on. It really blossomed when Rue Jensen came to CSU. He showed everybody how to do research and produced a lot of things before I came. He was dean when I came. He was most helpful and understood research. He just kind of turned me loose, except I'd see him once a year to get some more money or something. More cattle than I had money, to feed. This type of thing. He just kind of turned me loose. But, he knew all the time what I was doing. He's an amazing man. Dennis Maguire: He did his own research in vibriosis in sheep, didn't he? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah, he and Dr. Miller. Now, the disease in sheep is entirely different disease. Dennis Maguire: Is that still a problem or have they developed a vaccine? Alvin Hoerlein: They developed the vaccine. Dennis Maguire: Jensen? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah. Jensen and Miller. They did a nice piece of work. They showed that it was not a venereal disease. The vaccine will prevent the disease, but sheep aren't worth enough, and they don't have this kind of... depending on management, they can go a number of years without. It's carried by the ewe in the intestinal tract. And, when things go wrong, why then of course, you lose a lot of lambs. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: And they're aborted, which is rare in cattle. Mostly, they're infertile. They never have an abortion that you can see. In lambs, it's almost always an abortion or near full term, with some weak full term lambs born. Dennis Maguire: It's more of a placental disease in cattle? Alvin Hoerlein: No, it's more of a placental disease in sheep, it's very definitely a placental disease. In cattle, it's... it interferes with conception. So, that the fertilized ovum is killed apparently about, before 14 days. Because, more than half of the efforts will cycle up to normal time. These are the things we learned. We learned an awful lot of things, just by setting the disease and talking to people, and testing. We tested, I don't know how many... I ought to look it up sometime, just for the heck of it. But, cervical mucus was our diagnostic aid that we were able to use. Partly developed here and partly by, in Louisiana. It made it possible to go out in the field for three or four days and bring back samples that we could still culture, using dry ice to freeze them. I guess the Experiment Station director, Wheeler was most helpful, and this was usually money to buy cattle. We also, at that time, had The Floyd Cross Foundation money. This was cattleman's money that had been developed in Floyd Cross' name. And we leaned heavily on that. Due to the markets and
things like that, I could put Experiment Station hay into cattle and then when we sold the cattle, these were Floyd Cross cattle and sold them, well they were worth more money. We put a lot of money in The Floyd Cross fund. I don't know if it has any now. Dennis Maguire: What role have the cattleman been playing in research here? Alvin Hoerlein: Oh, they've been most supportive. All of the IBR, Infectious Rhinotracheitis of cattle, the early work in that was mostly done here with Dr. Chow and Dr. Jensen and Dr. Brown. They developed a vaccine, which is widely used. Like I said, these were the golden years of veterinary research at CSU. There was hardly an AVMA journal or research journal that didn't have at least one article from CSU. This is not true now. And sometimes, there were three or four. Other journals too. Dennis Maguire: Is it that research is languishing here or there's just not the money, contracts and grants available for it? Alvin Hoerlein: It's everything all together. There are some awfully good people here that are busy teaching. And there's less research money than there used to be. And things are more expensive than they used to be. So, that research dollar doesn't go as far. It's just like your grocery dollar. Just doesn't go as far as it used to, your hamburger dollars. Dennis Maguire: (laughter) Alvin Hoerlein: Then, we kind of worked ourselves out of the vibriosis problem, we solved it. And the vaccine was widely used, all over the world. We then, got more interested in some other things, shipping fever in calves again, which we worked hard on. An area called preconditioning, where you vaccinate calves and wean them and different things before they shipped to the feed lot. Our results were not spectacular in that. Although, they were well designed experiments and controlled, we often didn't really have enough shipping fever, even in the controls. The preconditioned calves looked good too. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: It was a lot of work. Dr. Collier worked on that. Again, I did a million miles of driving out to the ranch to precondition calves, which was interesting but hard work. And then we used different feedlots. The calves were collected. The cattlemen were... organized this thing and gets to be a lot of buck work, a lot of telephone calls. Calves would arrive two days, in a two day period. And they were all bled, numbered, and whatever preconditioning or non preconditioning they went into. Cattlemen were very supportive with that, and the cattlemen have been. They've been the key to this whole thing. It's a wonderful organization and it was a real privilege to work with them.
And we worked on one of Dr. Jensen's old babies, thromboembolic meningoencephalitis. Dennis Maguire: (laughter) I'll look that one up. Alvin Hoerlein: Or you can... we refer to it here as TEM. And, we did quite a bit of work on that, found out some interesting things. And, there's all kinds of spin‐off off of these research projects. Dr. Carroll and I were able in a vaccination experiment out in the field, to show that heifers need feed, if you want to get them pregnant. Heifers with calves drouth conditions. And, this way... we weren't the first ones to have observed it, but maybe we had the best observation, because we had a well‐designed vibriosis experiment going. We knew the numbers and calving histories of all these cattle. Well, this was a real good thing, has a wide application of findings. You're going to have to feed them, or they won't cycle. They don't cycle, they won't breed. This also happens down south, where they have so much rain, the grass grows so lush, that she just isn't big enough to hold enough feed, enough energy. You know what I mean? What she's eating is all water. The heifer will feed the calf first. And, if there's some energy left, she'll cycle. And, she'll breed back if there's no other problems, which is interesting I think. Fascinating. But, all these things have to be learned. They're really very simple once you catch onto it. Then, toward the latter part of this, I did do more teaching. I taught veterinary immunology. I taught immunology to micro and med tech majors and was responsible for the labs for them, for preparation materials. Labs take a lot of preparation, a lot of time. We changed the whole laboratory structure of that program. Improved it, I'm sure. Dennis Maguire: Is this the getting away from the sections that the students prepare? Alvin Hoerlein: No, in immunology, they don't prepare sections. We supply the materials, and they run tests. The classical immunologic tests, agglutination tests and common fixation, auger, migration electro freezes, this type of thing. But, you've got to have the adversary, you got to have the antigens, you got to have many things, and they all have to be tested before they go out in the lab. And, we used to run three or four sections of lab, so it was a lot of material. Dennis Maguire: A lot of supportive staff? Alvin Hoerlein: I've always had a good technician, which helped an awful lot. Except, oh I had a hiatus of a year there, but that's hiring problems. You can't just go out and hire somebody. Dennis Maguire: So, have we covered your other research interests? Alvin Hoerlein: I guess most of them. I don't know. I've published immunologic, virologic, mycologic, even parasite. I did some parasite work in grad school. I covered
about all basis. I'm not a virologist at all. But, I do like immunology and many of the things you do with viruses. You find after the fact, that they've been infected. So, that's still studying the virus disease. Immunology is the thing I guess, I worked with more than anything. Dennis Maguire: Your publications are mostly for technical journals? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah, all the ones in my list of publications, which you may or may not have seen and may not want to, there's 70 or 80. Dennis Maguire: Wow. Alvin Hoerlein: There is a cd on file over in microbiology if... I don't know why you'd want to look it up, but you might. I mean, reading the titles... Dennis Maguire: I looked at some of those. Alvin Hoerlein: Beg your pardon? Dennis Maguire: Not yours, but I've looked at samples of those lists of publications. Alvin Hoerlein: It's a few pages. Dennis Maguire: Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the Department of Pathology and Bacteriology. When you came here... Alvin Hoerlein: That was the department. Dennis Maguire: Yeah. Alvin Hoerlein: And, I don't remember what year the departments were separated. The department got pretty big and in fact, the college got pretty big. Rue Jensen was able to keep track of both at that time, but it got too big. And I think the division was after I came, to the Department of Bacteriology and Pathology. Then later, it was the Department of Microbiology, that's its name. Words. Dennis Maguire: So, that... Alvin Hoerlein: ‘62 it says here. Dennis Maguire: Those two... that's really not an important change of name, it's just... Alvin Hoerlein: It's important only in, I think in administration. The pathologists and the microbiologists, veterinary microbiologists, traditionally, have been very cooperative and worked together on mutual problems.
Dennis Maguire: Is bacteriology that... is that term bacteriology too narrow for the work that's done? Alvin Hoerlein: Yeah, and that's why it was changed to microbiology. The main groups of infectious agents are bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, and I guess that covers it. Malaria, for instance, in animals, malaria like diseases are protozoa, but they're straight infections. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) okay. Yeah, I thought bacteriology would probably only deal with bacterium. Alvin Hoerlein: Well, microbiology started out... actually, mycology the first infectious disease was a mycotic disease. But, then bacteriology and the work that Pasteur did, til he worked with rabies was bacterial. Then, he worked with rabies and Pasteur treatment for rabies in man, was his development. This was the golden age in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, when infectious disease was discovered. They learned how to grow organisms and coke. They used potato slices and was able to isolate organisms, get isolated colonies. We use auger of course now. But, that was fascinating history. That's the kind of history, medical history, that you'd be fascinated with. And they didn't have anything. They worked with their bare hands. But, they had time to think, because there wasn't much known. They could take all these little things that were known, put them together, and come up with a hypothesis to prove it. Now, there is so much medical science, nobody knows it all. Nobody knows a large fraction of it. And every year, everybody, the fraction becomes smaller and smaller. It's unbelievable, but it's true of all science. Dennis Maguire: Okay, let's see. We said that the split of the department was an administrative problem. Alvin Hoerlein: Well, I think it had administrative benefits. That's the only reason, it just got too big for one person. Too many projects, too many people. So, then you just split it in half, well, then it's a reasonable size. This is what they were going to do when I went to the University of Illinois, divide their department, which was same. Dennis Maguire: This is a good place to ask you, in my interviews with other men, I've run across there's some kind of dichotomy or an undercurrent of antagonism between the DVMs on one side and the PhDs without DVMs on the other. Alvin Hoerlein: Well... Dennis Maguire: Are you caught in the middle of that? Alvin Hoerlein: No, it's never been a problem. I've worked with PhDs of all kind of disciplines, biochemists and physicists and whatnot over the years. There's really no problem. But, I'm sure that people have made or tried to make problems out of
this. Now, historically, this department was veterinary. And before I got into veterinary school, they had two non‐veterinarians in the department, Dr. Glick and Dr. Reuszer. Reuszer was interested at that time in soil microbiology and Glick had a wider interest of non‐veterinary things. They worked in the same lab, over in the bulletin room, that old building, with everybody else, no problems. Most of the publications, over the years, have been the veterinary end of this. Now, gradually, until now, there are of course many more non veterinary microbiologists in the department than there are veterinary. That's because of unfortunate things, retirement and what not, and they've not been replaced. Partly because they're not available. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: There's a great shortage of veterinary microbiologists. Dennis Maguire: It's almost as if the combination, well veterinary microbiologists have a lot to learn nowadays. Alvin Hoerlein: They have a lot to learn. I think they need PhD training. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: I mean, veterinary medicine is a good basic training in many, many subjects. But, life’s become more complicated, so you do have to specialize and a good graduate program in microbiology can prepare a good veterinarian to be a good veterinary microbiologist. A PhD doesn't guarantee anything, ever. It's still the person involved and it's the kind of training he gets. Part of that depends on his major professor. A major professor has to keep track of him. If he has too many, he won't learn much. And it depends on the development of good graduate courses. We've done fairly well here, except we haven't had enough veterinary graduate students. Ted Kramer was one of them. He's head of the department at Iowa State now. We've had quite a few good ones. Dr. Torres has had some good PhD students with veterinary backgrounds. But, we've not had a grant program like the pathologists did. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: So, that we could've had 10 on deck at a time. And that has hurt the discipline of veterinary microbiology. Dennis Maguire: All right. Down to environmental health... Alvin Hoerlein: This was a program that Dr. Collier got started. It, I think, is a very important program. It's developed very well here under Dr. Bagby. It's a good program. It really isn't, it doesn't really in a way, belong in the Department of Microbiology. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative)
Alvin Hoerlein: It's a different kind of a cat. But, Dr. Collier brought it into microbiology, because there wasn't any other place for it. He was into microbiology at that time. It's been a good home. Environmental health needed a home. Dennis Maguire: Yeah. Alvin Hoerlein: And I still don't know where they could get a better home, right now. I mean, part of their activities are similar to microbiologic activities, investigative things looking for toxins, or what not. Dennis Maguire: Do you know much about the microbiology major being specialized into two options? Like say, the fish disease technology option? Alvin Hoerlein: Oh, I wondered what you were referring to. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: I don't know too much about it. The fish disease is an option. But, there are many options that are similar. Some of these are genetics, and some of them are metabolic things with bacteria or with other infectious agents. Dennis Maguire: Mm‐hmm (affirmative) Alvin Hoerlein: I don't know if there's any... that that's a bona fide division or a specialization. There are many specializations in microbiology. Dennis Maguire: It's the only one that's on the books, but Dr. Morrison feels that the fish disease technology option is going to die out shortly. Alvin Hoerlein: Well, it'll probably die out, because they won't have the students. They won't have money. It's probably no more a technological degree than med tech. It's a graduate degree but it's not an academic graduate degree. I guess that's what you'd call the other type of graduate degree. But, I think, it'll never be a big program, I'm guessing. Not enough money and jobs. Our neighbor up Estes Park is a fish biologist. It's at least a masters, I think a PhD. He's not working in fish biology because he didn't have a job. He's working at someplace else, commutes back and forth every day, but not in his major. Dennis Maguire: Have we said enough about the impact of contracts and grants? Alvin Hoerlein: I suppose so. Dennis Maguire: All right. How about instructional changes instituted by Bill Tietz? How do you feel about those? Alvin Hoerlein: My feelings are not very positive, I guess. Many things needed to be changed. When I went to school, I took two years of anatomy. And boy, don't think that
wasn't a job. Now, they, I don't know how much they take, but it's not very much. I think that the success of veterinarians that went through the old school, up until 10 years ago maybe, and they were able to do all kinds of things. Veterinarians do a million different things. More than just talking to owners of dogs and cats, and handling diseased farm animals. They do a lot of things, and they do them well. I think the success here of the period, that's 10 years, maybe it's 15 years ago, where this new curricula came in, was because they had good basic training. If you have the good basic training, this is something pretty stable, a foundation to build on. I'm not convinced that a few weeks of immunology for veterinary students, is going to give him good basic training. It just isn't time enough. I don't... We used to fill a whole semester with immunology and we didn't teach everything that was known. We tried to keep it in perspective, because we were pretty well founded in other disciplines, pathology, clinical medicine and things like that. Dennis Maguire: Do you think other aspects of the veterinary medicine program shifted because, as immunology has? Alvin Hoerlein: I think... Well, yeah, there's a lot of... (silence)
