Bacteriology and the railroad were seen as comparable victories over nature

Evidence

The nineteenth century had customarily measured the march of civilization in terms of natural obstacles overcome by science and technology. The new bacteriological discoveries may well have represented for contemporaries the most spectacular victory over nature since the steam engine. The important point here, however, is not which “revolution” was greater-the locomotive or modern bacteriology-but rather that many contemporaries saw them as comparable triumphs; in the end, this tendency made more natural Roume’s linking public health and railroads. — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 223