Participation of microbiologists Z.V. Ermolyeva and L.M. Yakobson in a scientific discussion about the fate of the production of Soviet cholera bacteriophages in 1967

Since the late 1920s in the USSR, along with many countries, there has been an interest in studying the phenomenon of bacteriophagy and its use in medicine. Bacteriophages are called bacterial viruses. Significant work on the study of bacteriophages and their use for medical purposes was carried out by Soviet microbiologists Zinaida Vissarionovna Ermolyeva and Lidiya Mikhailovna Yakobson. They paid especially great attention to the study of cholera bacteriophage, which during the Great Patriotic War helped prevent the cholera epidemic in frontline Stalingrad. In the 1940s due to the advent of the era of antibiotics with a wider range of applications, research interest in bacteriophages was waning. Nevertheless, in the prevention and treatment of a number of infectious diseases of bacterial origin, phage continued to be used in the following decades. In 1967, one of the country’s largest microbiologists sent an appeal to the Chief Sanitary Doctor of the USSR with a proposal to stop or reduce the production of cholera bacteriophage in the country. In this regard, a scientific discussion in which Z.V. Ermolyeva and L.M. Yakobson played an important role unfolded. Using the materials of the State Archive of the Russian Federation and the Russian State Archive of Economics, involving published scientific works on microbiology and medicine, an attempt is made to analyze this scientific discussion and establish its significance in the fate of the production of cholera bacteriophage in the USSR.