Early work on tissue culture by a pioneering female cell biologist. First edition of 'the first German textbook that provided detailed instructions on tissue culture methods and indicated how they might be applied for cancer research', by the pioneering cytologist Rhoda Erdmann (Ogilvie, Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science, p. 424). Rare, with only one institutional copy listed in WorldCat, at the University of Groningen.

Erdmann (1870-1935) struggled throughout her career, despite being recognised by her peers as a talented and forward-looking researcher. After qualifying in 1907, she worked at the University of Munich and did experimental cell research at the Helgoland and Naples zoological stations for her dissertation. She then became a scientific assistant at the Robert Koch Institute for Infectious Diseases.

In 1913 the American Lorande Loss Woodruff announced his discovery that single-celled paramecium could reproduce asexually seemingly indefinitely. Erdmann had been studying 'the importance of sexual reproduction for both nuclear division and death of single-celled organisms' and wrote requesting samples of his cultures (Ogilvie). Instead, her offered her a position a Yale, where she 'solved a number of problems related to parthenogenesis. She also updated her techniques of tissue culture under Ross Harrison, head of the Osborn Laboratory at Yale, who had developed new methods of culturing nerve cells' (Ogilvie). After briefly being held as an enemy alien in Britain during 1914, Erdmann was offered the position of lecturer at Yale by Harrison, 'an extraordinary offer since the charter of the university had to be changed to admit her as a woman faculty member' (Ogilvie). This productive period ended in 1918 when local anti-German sentiment let to her firing and imprisonment.

On her return to Germany Erdmann overcame additional hurdles to establish the first German department for experimental cytology. Working conditions were bad, and as late as 1927 she was earning a lower salary than her assistant. But 'both students and co-workers were attracted to the new field and the medical faculty recognized experimental cytology as an interdisciplinary science important to both medical biology and physiology. Erdmann supplied both fields with assistants well trained in cytology' (Ogilvie). During this period she also founded an international journal for cell research which had editors and contributors from as far away as Japan, and covered 'every branch of cytology, including biochemistry, cell physiology, electrophysiology, and radiation biology. This was the only international scientific publication published by a woman. Erdmann planned several international cell biology congresses, advertising them in the issues of the journal' (Ogilvie).

The final years of Erdmann's life were blighted by the rise of the Nazis. She was jailed by the Gestapo for helping Jews escape Germany, and then lost her position under the 'Aryan' laws of 1934. She died in Berlin the following year, having 'promoted the importance of tissue culture studies in biology and cancer research in her lectures and scientific publications until her untimely death' (Ogilvie).

First edition, first impression; 8vo (22.5 x 15 cm); illustrations from photographs throughout the text, library ink stamps to title and 9 leaves, library shelf number to title in blue ink; illustrations from photographs throughout the text; contemporary library binding of marbled boards with black cloth backstrip, titles to spine gilt, some wear and paper loss at the edges and corners of the boards, a very good copy; 117pp.