author
Ward J. MacNeal
A pioneering American bacteriologist and physician, this early 20th-century researcher helped shape how microbiology was taught to medical students. His best-known work turned complex lab science into a practical, readable textbook for doctors in training.
1 Audiobook
Contagious Abortion of Cows
by Ward J. MacNeal
About the author
Born in Fenton, Michigan, in 1881, Ward J. MacNeal built his career at the intersection of medicine, bacteriology, and teaching. Sources available during this search describe him as an American microbiologist and parasitologist, and University of Michigan materials show that he earned degrees there in the early 1900s, including an A.B., Ph.D., and M.D.
MacNeal is best remembered as the author of Pathogenic Micro-Organisms: A Text-Book of Microbiology for Physicians and Students of Medicine, first published in 1914 and later reissued in subsequent editions. The book grew out of an effort to revise an established bacteriology manual, and it helped present the fast-developing science of infectious disease in a form useful to physicians and students.
His name continued to carry weight long after his lifetime: the University of Michigan later established the Ward J. MacNeal Educational and Scientific Memorial Trust Distinguished Dissertation Award in his honor. I found cataloged portrait records for him at the U.S. National Library of Medicine, but I could not verify a direct usable image file from the available pages, so no profile image is included here.