Hérelle, Félix D’

(b. Montreal, Canada, 25 April 1873; d. Paris, France, 22 February 1949)

microbiology.

D’Hérelle had an extremely cosmopolitan life. Born in Canada to a French father, who died when Félix was six, and a Dutch mother, he received his secondary education at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He began his medical studies at Paris and continued them at Leiden. In 1901 d’Hérelle went to Guatemala City as director of the bacteriology laboratory of the municipal hospital and also to teach microbiology at the Faculty of Medicine. He then went to Yucatan to study the fermentation of sisal hemp. The Mexican government sent him to the Pasteur Institute in Paris to further his knowledge of microbiology; he entered in 1909 as an assistant to A. Salimbeni and remained until 1921.

While in Paris. d’Hérelle studied a bacterium which causes enteritis in acridians, Coccobacillus acridiorum (Aerobacter aerogenes var. acridiorum), which he had observed in Yucatan. In 1915 Roux sent him to Tunisia in an attempt to employ this microbe against locusts, but the successes achieved were not subsequently confirmed. In growing the microbe d’Hérelle had noted empty spots on the gelose culture plates and thought they resulted from a virus which accompanied the microbe and was destroying it. He then had a presentiment of “the discovery of a phenomenon of wide significance, which he linked to the battle of the organism against the diseases of the digestive tract” (P. Lépine, p. 458). Examining cultures of the dysentery bacillus in Paris in 1916, he again observed these “sterile regions” on the surface of the culture and showed that a filterable element isolated from the feces of dysentery victims completely destroyed, after several hours, a culture broth of the bacillus. On 10 September 1917 d’Hérelle presented to the Academy of Sciences, through Roux, a note entitled “Sur un microbe invisible, antagoniste du bacille dysentérique”—which he soon named “microbe bactériophage,” then “bactériophage.”

The phenomenon of bacteriophagy had already been observed in 1915 by an English scientist, Frederick Twort; but he did not continue his investigations, the full importance of which he did not seem to have grasped. Pierre Nicolle has rightly written: “To recognize Twort’s priority is certainly not to diminish d’Hérelle’s merit. Nor does one wound Twort’s legitimate pride to assert that d’Hérelle, after having rediscovered the bacteriophage... derived the greater glory from the discovery” (Presse médicate, p. 350). By 1949 more than 6,000 publications had been devoted to the bacteriophage.

In 1919 d’Hérelle investigated typhose aviaire (fowl typhoid) in France and isolated the phages effective against its microbe. The following year he was sent to Indochina by the Pasteur Institute to study human dysentery and septic pleuropneumonia in buffaloes. In connection with the latter he perfected the techniques for isolating the bacteriophage. In 1921 he published Le bactériophage, son rôle dans l’immunité, which enjoyed considerable acclaim. In the same year he was appointed assistant professor at the University of Leiden, where he remained for two years. In 1923 he was associated with the Egyptian Council on Health and Quarantine as director of the Bacteriological Service, and in 1927 he was sent to the East Indies to attempt the prophylaxis of cholera by means of the bacteriophage that could cure the disease. From 1928 to 1934 d’Hérelle taught protobiology (a term created to designate the science of the bacteriophage) at Yale University. He was called upon in 1935 by the Russian government to organize institutes for the study of the bacteriophage in Tiflis, Kiev, and Kharkov. Political conditions obliged him to leave the country, and he settled in Paris, where he continued to work on the bacteriophage until his death.

D’Hérelle received many honors: the Leeuwenhoek Medal (1925), the Schaudinn Medal (1930), and the Prix Petit d’Ormoy of the Academy of Sciences (1948); he was doctor honoris causa of the universities of Leiden, Yale, Montreal, and Laval. He married Mary Kerr in 1893. Although a simple, affable, and apparently even-tempered man, he could, on occasion, be fiery and irascible.

With techniques that are all the more remarkable considering that quantitative methods were not yet employed in bacteriology on a large scale, d’Hérelle demonstrated the corpuscular nature of the bacteriophage that was later confirmed by electron microscopy. He also described how it attaches itself to harmful bacteria and its multiplication following their lysis. He attempted to apply phagotherapy to various human and animal infectious diseases, including dysentery, cholera, plague, and staphylococcus and streptococcus infections. This type of therapy was favored for a time, especially in the Soviet Union, but was later rejected; it has been replaced by chemotherapy and treatment with antibiotics.

Today the bacteriophage is considered to be an ultravirus and is employed in theoretical and practical studies—for example, in the diagnosis of the phagic types of the typhoid bacillus and of the paratyphoid B bacillus by means of the method developed by J. Craigie and A. Felix.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. D’Hérelle’s principal works are “Sur une épizootie de nature bactérienne sévissant sur les sauterelles du Mexique,” in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Acadédemie des sciences, 152 (1911), 1413–1415; “Les coccobacilles des sauterelles,’ in Annales de l’Instaut Pasteur, 28 (1914), 1–69; “Sur le procédé biologique de destruction des sauterelles,” in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académic des sciences, 161 (1915), 503–505; “Sur un microbe invisible, antagoniste du bacille dysentérique,” ibid., 165 (1917), 373–375; Le bactériophage, son rôle dans l’immunité (Paris, 1921); Les défenses de l’organisme (Paris, 1923); Le bactériophage et son comportement (Paris, 1926); Le phénoméne de la guérison dans les maladies infectieuses (Paris, 1938); L’étude d’une maladie, le choléra, maladie à paradoxes (Paris, 1946); “Le bactériophage,” in Atomes, no. 33 (1948), 399–403; “The Bacteriophage,” in Science News, 14 (1949), 44–59.

II. Secondary Literature. On d’Hérelle and his work see P. Lépine, “Félix d’Hérelle (1873–1949),” in Annales de l’institut Pasteur, 76 (1949), 457–460; and P. Nicolle, “Félix d’Hérelle,” in Presse médicale, 57e année, no. 25 (1949), p. 350; “Le bactériophage,” in Biologic médicale, 38 (1949), 233–306; and “Cinquantiéme anniversaire d’une grande découverte anglo-franco-canadienne en biologie: le bactériophage,” in Bulletin de I’Académie nationals de médecine, 151 (1967), 404–409.

Jean ThÉodoridÈs