Despite a surge of recent scholarship on the long and broad history of biotechnology, the use of biological controls such as fungal and insect vectors does not immediately spring to mind when considering early attempts to engineer life. Yet the early twentieth century saw an ambitious attempt to artificially cultivate and disseminate the parasitic Empusa muscae fungus to destroy the housefly (Musca domestica). This paper argues that E. muscae represented an early twentieth-century disconnect between the promised hopes of biological control and the problematic reality of its use. During the late nineteenth century, bacteriological techniques established that the housefly spread disease, while biological controls were trialled against locusts and other insects in North America and South Africa. In 1912, Edgar Hesse successfully cultivated E. muscae at the Working Men's College in London. His ambition to use the fungus to exterminate the housefly was short-lived, thwarted by technical difficulties and the realization that the fungus also carried harmful pathogens. Although the use of E. muscae ultimately proved a failure, its history offers us a glimpse of a little-known, yet surprisingly familiar, world of biotechnological aspiration and controversy.

尽管最近关于生物技术悠久而广泛的历史的学术研究激增，但在考虑早期尝试改造生命时，并没有立即想到使用真菌和昆虫载体等生物控制手段。然而，在 20 世纪初，人们雄心勃勃地尝试人工培育和传播寄生的Empusa muscae真菌来消灭家蝇（Musca domestica）。本文认为E. muscae代表了 20 世纪早期生物控制的承诺希望与其使用存在问题的现实之间的脱节。在 19 世纪后期，细菌学技术确定家蝇传播疾病，同时在北美和南非对蝗虫和其他昆虫进行了生物防治试验。1912年，埃德加·黑塞在伦敦工人学院成功培育出E. muscae 。他使用真菌消灭家蝇的野心是短暂的，由于技术困难和意识到真菌也携带有害病原体的认识而受挫。虽然使用E. muscae最终证明是失败的，它的历史让我们瞥见了一个鲜为人知但令人惊讶的熟悉的生物技术愿望和争议世界。