Аннотация:The concept of appropriation has been applied in various contexts to investigate how different groups in society approach new scientific facts and technical artifacts in an active and creative manner. In this article we introduce the concept of “mutual appropriation” to describe the circulation of knowledge between scientific communities, in this case public health doctors and bacteriologists. In much the same way as Bruno Latour has shown for the French Pasteuriens , the German bacteriologists around Robert Koch adapted their research agenda to the interests of the Hygieniker . Conversely, most members of the public health movement appropriated bacteriological arguments and integrated them in multifactorial etiologies, thus modifying existing theories. Despite cognitive differences, the collaboration was guided by a sense of a common cause that was reinforced by a feeling of urgency due to the 1892 cholera epidemic in Hamburg.
