I ended the last chapter with a comment hinting at the relationship between pure science and its applications. A clear example is that most personal and important technology, the one called medicine. For medicine is not a science, despite the fact that its practitioners are called doctors. It is a model example of a technology, the application of various branches of science to one facet of the human condition. It is, historically, one of the most admirable examples of science and its application progressing hand-in-hand; even today it is unique among technologies in that a fundamental discovery in, say, a biochemical or physical laboratory may find application in medical practice within weeks instead of years.

The reason is simple to see. We all hate being ill, whether we are doctors, scientists, treasury officials or laymen, and we will support with positive enthusiasm research intended to cure or alleviate this condition, whereas the study of quasars or the ecology of plankton might cause us reservations. Microbiologists have particular cause to be grateful for the self-interest that underlies the relative affluence accorded to medical research because, since microbes are the cause of most illnesses, microbiology has progressed very rapidly in the twentieth century, particularly in its medical aspects. Naturally, this imbalance has left non-medical microbiology in a somewhat neglected state, as will become obvious in later chapters of this book, but though pure microbiologists have at times been critical of the narrowness of their more medical colleagues, this fact should not blind one to the enormous contribution the traditional Path. and Bact. type of scientist has made to the science as a whole.