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Esta revisión versa sobre las primeras investigaciones acerca de una de las enfermedades sobresalientes en la historia de la medicina: la fiebre puerperal, asesina de parturientas entre los siglos XVII y XIX. Aborda la controversia en torno a su naturaleza fisiológica y contagiosidad, y analiza, desde diversas perspectivas, el rechazo a que fue sometido el doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, descubridor de su modo de transmisión. Finalmente, hace alusión a la validación de sus resultados y conclusiones mediante análisis estadísticos modernos así como a la interpretación filosófica de su modelo de descubrimiento y de inferencia.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has introduced a new dimension in the different fields of science. In the Western world, AI has been adopted enthusiastically in healthcare fields due to its efficiency and precision. In contrast, the healthcare system in Pakistan has not given due attention to this scientific advancement. Lack of awareness, and financial and moral concerns related to AI, undermine the usefulness of AI. There are opportunities and obstacles in every evolutionary step. It is crucial to embrace the brighter side of AI for a better approach to the healthcare of patients in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The microcephaly epidemic, which started in Brazil in 2015, was declared a Public Health Emergency of International Concern by WHO in 2016. We report the preliminary results of a case-control study investigating the association between microcephaly and Zika virus infection during pregnancy.Methods: We did this case-control study in eight public hospitals in Recife, Brazil. Cases were neonates with microcephaly. Two controls (neonates without microcephaly), matched by expected date of delivery and area of residence, were selected for each case. Serum samples of cases and controls and cerebrospinal fluid samples of cases were tested for Zika virus-specific IgM and by quantitative RT-PCR. Laboratory-confirmed Zika virus infection during pregnancy was defined as detection of Zika virus-specific IgM or a positive RT-PCR result in neonates. Maternal serum samples were tested by plaque reduction neutralisation assay for Zika virus and dengue virus. We estimated crude odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CIs using a median unbiased estimator for binary data in an unconditional logistic regression model. We estimated ORs separately for cases with and without radiological evidence of brain abnormalities.Findings: Between Jan 15, 2016, and May 2, 2016, we prospectively recruited 32 cases and 62 controls. 24 (80%) of 30 mothers of cases had Zika virus infection compared with 39 (64%) of 61 mothers of controls (p=0·12). 13 (41%) of 32 cases and none of 62 controls had laboratory-confirmed Zika virus infection; crude overall OR 55·5 (95% CI 8·6-∞); OR 113·3 (95% CI 14·5-∞) for seven cases with brain abnormalities; and OR 24·7 (95% CI 2·9-∞) for four cases without brain abnormalities.Interpretation: Our data suggest that the microcephaly epidemic is a result of congenital Zika virus infection. We await further data from this ongoing study to assess other potential risk factors and to confirm the strength of association in a larger sample size.Funding: Brazilian Ministry of Health, Pan American Health Organization, and Enhancing Research Activity in Epidemic Situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the upsurge of research on disgust, the implications of this research for the investigation of cultural pollution beliefs has yet to be adequately explored. In particular, the sensitivity of both disgust and pollution to a common set of elicitors (e.g., bodily emissions, disease, and death) suggests a common psychological basis, though several obstacles have prevented an integrative account, including methodological differences between the relevant disciplines. Employing a conciliatory framework that embraces both naturalistic (evolutionary) and humanistic levels of explanation, this article examines the dynamic reciprocal process by which contamination/contagion appraisals in individuals serve to shape-and are in turn shaped by-culture-specific pollution beliefs. This complex interrelationship is illustrated by examining ancient Near Eastern and modern ethnographic documentation of pollution beliefs, highlighting the underappreciated function of these pollution beliefs as folk theories for the spread of infectious disease. By evaluating how pollution beliefs (as also modern germ theory) shape contamination appraisals in individuals, it will be argued that cultural inheritance has played a much larger role in guiding disease avoidance behavior than has been previously recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the notion that 'the normal lung is free from bacteria' remains common in textbooks, it is virtually always stated without citation or argument. The lungs are constantly exposed to diverse communities of microbes from the oropharynx and other sources, and over the past decade, novel culture-independent techniques of microbial identification have revealed that the lungs, previously considered sterile in health, harbor diverse communities of microbes. In this review, we describe the topography and population dynamics of the respiratory tract, both in health and as altered by acute and chronic lung disease. We provide a survey of current techniques of sampling, sequencing, and analysis of respiratory microbiota and review technical challenges and controversies in the field. We review and synthesize what is known about lung microbiota in various diseases and identify key lessons learned across disease states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wolf nonetheless offers a compelling synthesis of the evolution of cesarean sections in the United States that situates the topic well for future historical study. Although the lethality of such procedures has diminished, unnecessary cesarean surgeries can still have both short and long-term health consequences according to WHO and other global experts (Keenan, WHO website, June 2021; Sandall et al. I Lancet i , October 2018). Although Wolf occasionally draws from the international context, she could also pay more attention to how global trends shaped cesarean section practices in the United States. [Extracted from the article]

The article discusses the celebration of the 200th birthday of French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur in 2022. Pasteur is recognized for work in pasteurization and the development of rabies vaccines for humans and animals and vaccines for livestock, including anthrax, fowl cholera, and swine erysipelas. Pasteur is remembered for his significant contributions to hygiene, public health, and modern medicine, which continue to benefit society greatly.

This article explores the role of narrative in development programmes targeting children and the powerful way narrative acts as both a tool of, and justification for, participation of child subjects in development globally. Taking the example of one handwashing promotion campaign in Delhi, India, this article, through a close reading of several texts produced by children in the course of the campaign, explores the different ways development workers and children value and utilize narrative skills for their own ends. In particular, the way that narrative techniques learnt within the non-governmental organization are used by children to defer the kinds of scrutiny and assumptions about their hygiene practices that come with being the target of a handwashing promotion campaign. Through a discussion of the various historical and contemporary trajectories that make handwashing promotion a favoured task of development organizations globally, I explore the way children’s texts navigate a complex terrain of concerns from colonial biopolitics to advertising, germ theory to pollution and purity discourses. In exploring the context of children’s narrative production, I hope to bring into sharper focus the way children accept narrative ‘challenges’ and how they craft stories that play a dual role, speaking both to development concerns but also to their own life projects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Herein, we report the first occurrence of web blight of rosemary caused by Rhizoctonia sobni AG-1-IB in Cangneung, Gangwon Province, Korea, in August 2014. The leaf tissues of infected rosemary plants were blighted and white mycelial growth was seen on the stems. The fungus was isolated from diseased leaf (issue and cultured on potato dextrose agar for identification. The young hyphae had acute angular branching near the distal septum of the multinucleate cells and mature hyphal branches formed at an approximately 90" angle. This is morphologically identical to R. solani AG-1-IB, as per previous reports. rDNA-ITS sequences of the fungus were homologous to those of R. solani AG-1-IB isolates in the GenBank database with a similarity percentage of 99%, thereby confirming the identity of the causative agent of the disease. Pathogenicity of the fungus in rosemary plants was also confirmed by Koch's postulates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whenever cultures meet, exchange is inevitable. There will be exchanges of goods, of languages, of cultures, and of disease. The epidemics and pandemics sparked by European expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were devastating but ultimately encouraged scholars to think critically about disease and its origins. By examining the language and ideas of first-hand accounts of plague, scurvy, syphilis, and smallpox, the evolution of European theories of disease can be traced from the Justinian Plague of 560 AD to the London Plague of 1625 AD. Examining the impact that the European voyages of discovery had on theories of disease shows that expansionism served to catalyze the development of our modern germ theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current understanding on the role of microbiology on periodontitis causation is reviewed. An appraisal of the literature reveals several issues that have limited the attempts to investigate candidate periodontal pathogens as causes of periodontitis and confirms that only limited epidemiological evidence is available. Several aspects of the contemporary understanding on causal inference are discussed with examples for periodontitis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses need to address vaccine hesitancy and the more extreme germ theory denialism for preventive medicine organizations.

In the past 100 years, there have been myriad medical discoveries-giant steps-from Louis Pasteur's germ theory, to the understanding of gut physiology and metabolic processes-that are the essential underpinnings of modern day medicine. The beginnings of surgery to promote weight loss, now known as bariatric surgery, date back to the 1880s when it was noted that gut resections resulted in weight loss. It was not long afterward that articles started to appear documenting nutritional 'disturbances' and the patient's likelihood of survival based upon the location and the length of bowel removed. Numerous articles have been penned citing the first bariatric surgeries, but to date, there has not been a comprehensive look back at the origins of the science as well as the severe metabolic complications that furthered understanding, prompted innovative medical and surgical approaches, and ultimately led to modern day practice. This article endeavors to do exactly that. Intestinal bypass surgeries to treat obesity are here to stay. Some of the most profound complications of intestinal bypass manifest in the skeleton and include skeletal demineralization, hyperoxaluria, nephrolithiasis, and fractures. Much has been done to further elucidate the underlying mechanisms, identify preventive strategies, and implement practice guidelines, but this patient population remains at increased risk for metabolic bone disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific understanding of disease causation was crucial to the ways in which the Spanish colonial state addressed epidemic diseases which periodically struck nineteenth-century Philippines. Scholars have often described Spanish colonial responses in terms of ineptitude and failure, and have often glossed over the multiple and competing scientific theories that preoccupied Spanish and Filipino physicians. This article examines the work and ideas of nineteenth-century Spanish colonial and patriotic Filipino physicians regarding disease causation in the tropical environment of the Philippines. It will focus on two key developments—Spanish environmentalist thinking and the emerging fields of microscopy and bacteriology. Much like the British and French colonialists, Spaniards viewed tropical climates as insalubrious and conducive to disease, perceiving themselves as constitutionally at risk in hot places, ill-suited, exposed, and vulnerable to so-called native diseases. By the 1880s, however, young Filipino researchers, some of whom had trained in Spain and France, were undertaking new research on polluted water, malaria, and cells. Influenced by the revolutionary new discoveries being made in bacteriology, these researchers questioned prevailing environmentalist explanations and focused, for the first time, on the nature of pathogens and microbial pathogenesis in disease development and transmission. But germ theory remained an idea among many. This article argues that although late nineteenth-century studies in microscopy by Filipinos slowly began to challenge Spanish colonial ideas, different streams of thinking overlapped and no single scientific explanation came to predominate. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Written at a time when earlier etiologies of tuberculosis had given way to germ theory, Bernard Shaw's 1906 play The Doctor's Dilemma: A Tragedy both challenges and confirms scientific and literary conventions regarding consumption and those who suffer it. While the play's preface stands staunchly against germ theory, the play itself offers a rather more perplexed and perplexing treatment of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The existing microorganisms in the oral cavity are not harmless and they can express various pathogenic factors. These pathogenic factors are represented by the morphostructural and functional characteristics that ensure germ aggression against the host. They are represented by a particular chemical structure of the germs, different morphological characteristics, or different functional properties caused by certain enzymes or toxic discharge. The expression of pathogenicity of microorganisms is achieved when there is an imbalance that can affect the dynamics of the relations between macro and micro-organisms, the interaction of host antimicrobial capacities and pathogenic proprieties of microorganisms in favor of the latter. Depending on their pathogenic proprieties these bacteria can be: pathogenic, moderately pathogenic, highly pathogenic. The objective of this study is to reveal the pathogenic proprieties and the interactions of the oral cavity bacteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this article is to trace the history of the etiology of flacherie from the middle nineteenth century to the decade of the 1960s. In 1867, Louis Pasteur ascribed the pestilential epizootics among silkworms to two symptomatically different diseases, pebrine and flacherie. Identification of several bacteria and viruses as the pathogens of flacherie has led to the modern concept of flacherie as follows: a complex of silkworm diseases that differ in etiology but share the common sign of flaccid condition. The conceptual innovation entailed fundamental changes in the approaches to nosology and diagnosis. The viral pathogens have greater potential than the bacterial ones for catastrophic losses in sericulture because they are obligate parasites, highly virulent and persist in the sericultural environment long enough to allow year-to-year infection cycle. Until the end of the nineteenth century, scientific research on flacherie was conducted almost entirely in Europe. At the turn of the century, however, Europe was slowly being overtaken by Japan as a leading center of flacherie research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 19th century, there was extensive research on cholera: the disease was generally attributed to miasmatic causes, but this concept was replaced, between about 1850 and 1910, by the scientifically founded germ theory of disease. In 1883, Robert Koch identified the vibrion for the second time, after Filippo Pacini's discovery in 1854: Koch isolated the comma bacillus in pure culture and explained its mode of transmission, solving an enigma that had lasted for centuries. The aim of this article is to reconstruct the different steps towards the explanation of cholera, paying particular attention to the events occurring in the pivotal year 1854. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]