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Background: In the decades following the discovery of the bacillus causing typhoid, in 1880, understanding of the disease formerly known as enteric fever was transformed, offering new possibilities for prevention. Gradually, measures that aimed to prevent infection from human carriers were developed, as were inoculations designed to confer immunity against typhoid and paratyphoid fevers. These were initially introduced in European armies that were regularly ravaged by typhoid, especially garrisons stationed in the colonies. This article reviews the research undertaken in the armed forces and the measures that they implemented in the years up to and during the First World War., Methods: The article is based on an analytical review of scientific literature from the early 19th century, focusing on the United Kingdom, Germany, and France., Results: The armies of the United Kingdom, Germany, and France undertook important work on the transmission of typhoid in the years between 1890 and 1918. Many preventive measures were introduced to deal with the spread of typhoid but these varied between the 3 countries, depending largely on their political traditions. Inoculation was particularly successful in preventing typhoid and greatly reduced the number of casualties from this disease during the First World War. Despite this, it proved difficult to prevent paratyphoid infection, and debates continued over which vaccines to use and whether or not immunization should be voluntary., Conclusions: By the end of the First World War, the value of inoculation in preventing the spread of typhoid had been proven. Its successful implementation demonstrates the importance of vaccination as a public health intervention during times of conflict and social upheaval., (© The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America.)

This paper analyses how research on antibiotic resistance has been a driving force in the development of new antibiotics. Drug resistance, while being a problem for physicians and patients, offers attractive perspectives for those who research and develop new medicines. It imposes limits on the usability of older medicines and simultaneously modifies pathologies in a way that opens markets for new treatments. Studying resistance can thus be an important part of developing and marketing antibiotics. The chosen example is that of the German pharmaceutical company Bayer. Before World War Two, Bayer had pioneered the development of anti-infective chemotherapy, sulpha drugs in particular, but had missed the boat when it came to fungal antibiotics. Exacerbated by the effects of war, Bayer's world market presence, which had been considerable prior to the war, had plummeted. In this critical situation, the company opted for a development strategy that tried to capitalise on the problems created by the use of first-generation antibiotics. Part and parcel of this strategy was monitoring what can be called the structural change of infectious disease. In practice, this meant to focus on pathologies resulting from resistance and hospital infections. In addition, Bayer also focused on lifestyle pathologies such as athlete's foot. This paper will follow drug development and marketing at Bayer from 1945 to about 1980. In this period, Bayer managed to regain some of its previous standing in markets but could not escape from the overall crisis of anti-infective drug development from the 1970s on.

This paper reassesses Robert Koch's work on tropical infections of humans and cattle as being inspired by an underlying interest in epidemiology. Such an interest was developed from the early 1890s when it became clear that an exclusive focus on pathogens was insufficient as an approach to explain the genesis and dynamics of epidemics. Koch, who had failed to do so before, now highlighted differences between infection and disease and described the role of various sub-clinical states of disease in the propagation and--consequently--in the control of epidemics. Studying pathologies of men and cattle in tropical countries eventually facilitated the application of such measures in Europe through the screening of healthy carriers of typhoid, which was carried out in 1902. The concept of the carrier state can be understood as a spin-off from tropical medicine into the study and control of infectious disease in Europe. With it travelled assumptions that were typical for colonial and veterinary medicine where the health of indigenous individuals or cattle would be a secondary objective compared to the control of diseases in populations., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

This essay places some therapeutic vaccines, including particularly the diphtheria antitoxin, into their larger historical context of the late nineteenth century. As industrially produced drugs, these vaccines ought to be seen in connection with the structural changes in medicine and pharmacology at the time. Given the spread of industrial culture and technology into the field of medicine and pharmacology, therapeutic vaccines can be understood as boundary objects that required and facilitated communication between industrialists, medical researchers, public health officials, and clinicians. It was in particular in relation to evaluation and testing for efficacy in animal models that these medicines became a model for twentieth-century medicine. In addition, these medicines came into being as a parallel invention in two very distinct local cultures of research: the Institut Pasteur in Paris and the Institut für Infektionskrankheiten in Berlin. While their local cultural origins were plainly visible, the medicines played an important role in the alignment of the methods and objects that took place in bacteriology research in France and Germany in the 1890s. This article assesses the two locally specific regimes for control in France and in Imperial Germany. In France the Institut Pasteur, building on earlier successful vaccines, enjoyed freedom from scrutinizing control. The tight and elaborate system of control that evolved in Imperial Germany is portrayed as being reliant on experiences that were drawn from the dramatic events that surrounded the launching of a first example of so-called "bacteriological medicine," tuberculin, in 1890.

This paper analyses the historical origins and the popularity of 'Koch's Postulates'. In 1884 Friedrich Löffler wrote down the well-known three steps of isolation, cultivation and inoculation as conditions for establishing the existence of a pathogen. These postulates are frequently invoked in textbooks of medical history. Yet they seem to have had little relevance in medical research. Their assumed inventor, Robert Koch, produced numerous variations in his own methodology. However, underlying his work was a sort of trivial ontology of diseases which rendered an experimental reconstruction of human pathologies in animal models practical and meaningful. There were many ways to pursue this end. Koch usually limited his discussion to practical questions related to the course that investigations had to take, while matters of principle were only treated implicitly in his writings. Löffler's achievement was to popularise Koch's views in his postulates. Given that, it is not surprising that the countless references to Koch's postulates which one finds in the 20th century usually refer to the spirit rather than the literal meaning of the postulates. For example, proponents of virology or molecular medicine devise variations of Koch's postulates that serve to relate their own work to Koch's bacteriology. The latter is perceived as the origin of modern experimental medicine. The nature of such references is less historical than anecdotal: referring to a historical object that did not exist as such, these references produce ex traditione credentials for experimental medicine.

Based on the example of Robert Koch's cholera expedition of 1883/84, this paper analyses travelling as a mode of doing research that was characteristic of an applied science such as hygiene. A laboratory for hygiene is dependent on a certain environment which becomes noticeable through its absence. Examples are its dependence on the cultural acceptance of pathological dissections or a suitable climate in which gelatine-based solid culture media do not liquefy. Travelling abroad gave Koch and his collaborators privileged access to the public at home. Laboratory work was given the heroic image of a crusade against epidemics, and what had been complex research was presented as a simple discovery. Travelling abroad fulfilled Koch's own youthful ambitions and simultaneously opened up his career as a figure of public life. In addition it provided him with the experience of doing science in a profitable and enjoyable way.