Bacteriologist Dr. Ida A. Bengston (1881-1952) uses a microscope, in an image from the U.S. Public Health Service records. Dr. Bengston was one of the first women employed on the scientific staff of the Hygienic Laboratory of the Public Health Service, the predecessor to the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Bengston was particularly noted for her studies of bacterial toxins, especially the discovery of the organisim Clostridium botulinum, which caused a paralytic disease in chickens.