Search

Seasons form part of changing sensory experiences of urban environments. But it is important to note that, at times, urbanites broke down seasons into smaller slices. The "Dog Days" are a case in point. This term has now passed into urban myth, but the linking of Sirius with the heat of the summer and canine madness during the dog days stretches back to at least the Romans, and was still widely feared and discussed in the nineteenth century. This roundtable intervention aims to recover the meaning and experience of this season within a season using nineteenth-century New York City as a case study. Drawing on newspaper articles, medical reports, and other sources, it will discuss how the dog days were framed as a louche period of sultry heat and canine madness, a time when tempers and the fabric of urban life frayed. Situating itself within urban environmental and sensory history, this essay also aims to bring together climate and animal history. Before the widespread acceptance of germ theory at the end of the nineteenth century, the theory that the heat of the dog days and the strange influence of Sirius caused rabies was hotly debated in the press and among doctors. It also stoked vivid fears of the dog days, which led to material changes in the lives of dogs: muzzling, impoundment, and death. The dog days was a time when the nonhuman agencies of climate and canine seemingly combined in ways that threatened the physical and emotional health of New Yorkers. As such, the dog days stood for the sinister side of summer that was only broken with the arrival of autumnal freshness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assigning human characteristics to products and brands (i.e., anthropomorphism) is a tactic commonly adopted by marketers. However, researchers have recently highlighted the importance of better understanding which consumers will be more (or less) responsive to these cues. Drawing on the behavioral immune system and anthropomorphism literatures, we hypothesize that consumers who are chronically concerned about their susceptibility to infectious disease will have a greater tendency to anthropomorphize nonhuman entities (e.g., nature, technology, and consumer products) because doing so creates relatively pathogen‐free sources of social connection. Importantly, we also predict that this tendency will be muted when consumers are highly germ averse. To test these predictions, we examined the relationships between perceived infectability and germ aversion, the two subscales of the established Perceived Vulnerability to Disease scale, and three different measures of consumers' tendency to anthropomorphize nonhuman entities. The results of four studies, including a preregistered, high‐powered replication, support our hypotheses and offer the first evidence of a context wherein perceived infectability and germ aversion interact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global public health discourses tend to focus on the virus, its mutations, and the vaccine as the key factors relating to COVID. Asia, however, witnessed the rejuvenation of traditional medicine during the pandemic, and the improved outcomes of integrated protocols of traditional Asian medicine with biomedicine have been published. Based on fieldwork, telephone interviews, press reports, and institutional data collected during 2020–23, this paper highlights the role of Siddha medicine in the management of infectious fevers in Tamil Nadu. The most important question here is how a traditional system of medicine that does not have the germ theory of disease would deal with infectious fevers like COVID. The paper explains the "host-based" approach to infectious fevers found in contemporary Siddha medicine and its therapeutic rationale. It brings out how college-educated Siddha doctors create epistemological bridges between the traditional textual knowledge on fevers and the parameters of modern pathology, adding another dimension to the polymorphous trajectory of medical pluralism in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The anther‐smut host–pathogen system has provided extensive insights into the evolutionary ecology of disease resistance, transmission modes, host shifts, pathogen specialization, and disease evolution in metapopulations. It also has led to unexpected insights into sex ratio distorters, sex chromosome evolution, and transposable elements in fungi. In addition, anther‐smut disease played a major role in Linnaeus' germ theory and the correspondence on parasitic castration between Darwin and Becker, one of the first female botanists. Here, we explicitly highlight some of the realities in the process of science, using an unusual autobiographical approach to describe how we came to collaborate on this system in the 1980s. Using perspectives from our different career stages, we present a surprising narrative that could not be deduced from merely reading the published papers. While our work was grounded in previous ecological and evolutionary theory, it was the product as much of empirical failures and intellectual roadblocks, as the result of a progressive scientific method. Our experiences illustrate not only the "human dimension of science" but more importantly show that linear sequences of hypothesis testing do not necessarily lead to new study systems and new ideas. We suggest there is a need to re‐evaluate the scientific method in ecology and evolution, especially where the challenge is to engage in a productive dialog between natural history and theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Nigeria grapples with a substantial burden of tuberculosis (TB), particularly in Oyo State, designated as a high-burden State for TB. Effectively addressing this persistent health challenge necessitates more than just medical interventions; it requires a profound understanding of the diverse insights, beliefs, and myths held by TB patients. Methods: This qualitative study explores the perspectives of pulmonary TB patients with delayed healthcare access in Oyo State, Nigeria, focusing on their beliefs, and conceptions. In-depth interviews were conducted with 25 TB patients and 20 healthcare providers. Results: Thematic analysis of patients’ responses revealed a complex interplay between cultural, spiritual, and biomedical insights. These challenges questioned the germ theory, associating TB with witchcraft and spiritual attacks. Beliefs in hereditary transmission, links between tobacco use and health outcomes, and uncertainties about infection nature underscored disparities influenced by socioeconomic factors. Insights into transmission ideas, preventive measures, and treatment beliefs highlighted a blend of culturally influenced and scientifically supported strategies. Healthcare providers’ insights emphasized the necessity for targeted health education. Discussion: These findings contribute to a nuanced understanding of TB perceptions, emphasizing the importance of culturally sensitive interventions to enhance awareness and promote timely and accurate health-seeking behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The germ theory states that pathogenic microorganisms are responsible for causing infectious diseases. The theory is inherently microbe-centric and does not account for variability in disease severity among individuals and asymptomatic carriership--two phenomena indicating an important role for host variability in infection outcome. The basic tenet of the germ theory was recently challenged, and a radically host-centric paradigm referred to as the "full-blown host theory" was proposed. According to this view, the pathogen is reduced to a passive environmental trigger, and the development of disease is instead due to pre-existing immunodeficiencies of the host. Here, we consider the factors that determine disease severity using established knowledge concerning evolutionary biology, microbial pathogenesis, and host-pathogen interactions. We note that the available data support a noncentric view that recognizes key roles for both the causative microbe and the host in dictating infection outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Louis Pasteur, born December 27, 1822 in Dole, France, showed in his childhood and youth great abilities as an artistic painter; however by an age of 19, his interest changed toward science, and he moved to Paris to study chemistry and physics at École Normale Supérieure. During graduation, he initiated research on chiral crystallography and stereochemistry and got his doctorates in 1847 in both chemistry and physics. In 1848, he started as high school teacher in Dijon, but shortly after he became a deputy professor at the University of Strasbourg in chemistry and got married to the rector's daughter Marie Laurent. They had five children, of which only two survived. The family moved to Lille in 1854, where he worked as professor in chemistry and became the dean at the new Faculty of Science at the University of Lille. He initiated his famous research on fermentation in 1855. Louis Pasteur moved back to École Normale Supérieure in 1857, where a major part of his innovative research on fermentation took place ending up with the development of pasteurization in 1864. Through genius experiments, he disputed the spontaneous genesis theory and founded the basis for the germ theory, later confirmed by his enemy Robert Koch and several other research teams, which he for lifetime competed with on the cure and prevention against infectious disease causes by both bacteria such as cholera, anthrax, and virus‐induced infections as yellow fever and rabies. However, most of his experiments were done on animals since Pasteur and his colleagues at École Normale Superiére were not physicians but scientists. The first successful attenuated vaccine used in humans against rabies was, when the 9‐year‐old Joseph Meister was cured or prevented from rabies in 1885 after 13 vaccine injections done by the young pediatrician Joseph Grancher. This worldwide known intervention is both world famous and ethically criticized and disputed. The Pasteur Institute was inaugurated in 1888—now an international prestigious research institute—which has been expanded since in a network of affiliated Pasteur institutes over the whole world. There were multiple links to Danish scientists of the 19th century and to the Danish brewery industry. Most well known is the strong friendship between Louis Pasteur and the Carlsberg brewery and especially to its founder Jacob Christian Jacobsen, who was a great believer on a scientific approach to a cleaner fermentation process and better beer quality. Louis Pasteur stands as a milestone example of the fruitful outcome of scientific competition and collaboration and should therefore be remembered as an inspiration for present and future scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of the nineteenth century, when Edgar Allan Poe repeatedly wrote about disease, the theory that disease was caused by "miasma," i.e. some poisonous, foul-smelling vapor, was overwhelmingly influential, while the germ theory, which held that disease was the result of infection by pathogens, though largely ignored, underwent a drastic transformation from a mere hypothesis to evidence-based science. This essay considers how Poe's authorial handling of disease connects with these conflicting pathological doctrines at his time. It clarifies how Poe questions miasma theory and approaches germ theory in "King Pest," "Shadow—A Parable," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Sphinx," and "The Fall of the House of Usher." Furthermore, the essay shows that even though Poe, like the proponents of germ theory, suggested that microorganisms were the cause of disease, this did not erase his fear of disease, but rather intensified it, leading him to hold a dark vision—that we are destined to coexist with other species that threaten our lives—a vision that has frightened people since the late nineteenth century, when the existence of disease germs became widely recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of South Architecture / Nanfang Jianzhu is the property of South Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 1955, René Dubos famously expressed his "second thoughts on the germ theory", attributing infectious diseases to various "changing circumstances" that weaken the host by unknown mechanisms. He rightly stressed that only a small minority of individuals infected by almost any microbe develop clinical disease. Intriguingly, though, he did not mention the abundant and elegant findings reported from 1905 onward that unambiguously pointed to host genetic determinants of infection outcome in plants and animals, including human inborn errors of immunity. Diverse findings over the next 50 y corroborated and extended these earlier genetic and immunological observations that René Dubos had neglected. Meanwhile, the sequential advent of immunosuppression- and HIV-driven immunodeficiencies unexpectedly provided a mechanistic basis for his own views. Collectively, these two lines of evidence support a host theory of infectious diseases, with inherited and acquired immunodeficiencies as the key determinants of severe infection outcome, relegating the germ to an environmental trigger that reveals an underlying and preexisting cause of disease and death. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many ideas in the annals of science that were once ridiculed because they deviated from established “truth,” only to be rehabilitated with the passage of time. Among them: Galileo (1564-1642), punished by the Pope with house arrest for challenging the Ptolemaic theory -- a theory taught by Aristotle -- that the sun revolves around the earth; Alfred Wegener (1880-1930), who developed the theory of the movement of continental drift (later known as tectonic plates), to explain why matching prehistoric fossils could be found in places such as Europe and South America, with no known land bridges connecting them; J. Harlan Bretz (1882-1981) who showed that only cataclysmic floods could explain erosion and land formation in the Pacific Northwest, rather than the then-current theory of gradualism and “uniformitarianism.” Senior scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey in 1927 humiliated him in public; Ignaz Semelweiss (1818- 1865) observed that the incidence of “childbed fever” could be significantly reduced by the use of hand disinfectant in obstetrical clinics, c. 1847. He could not provide a medical explanation beyond his observation that maternal mortality was reduced to only 1% when hand washing with disinfectant was used. He was ridiculed for going against received medical practice and committed to an asylum by colleagues after supposedly suffering a nervous breakdown. There he was beaten by guards and died from an untreated gangrenous wound. It was not until Louis Pasteur confirmed the germ theory of disease and Joseph Lister showed the benefits of surgery using hygienic methods that his life-saving observations were credited. One can add to this list the name of J. Thomas Looney (1870-1944) who began researching the question of whether the name “Shakespeare” could be a pseudonym and, if so, who the author really was. Basing his work on attributes in the plays that might match little-known poets of the Elizabethan era with the real author, he identified Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, as the man responsible in his book Shakespeare Identified published in 1920. Criticized almost immediately, his research has nevertheless stood the test of time, with more and more people worldwide now arguing for Oxford in a debate that continues unabated. This paper looks at these personal histories as well as the psychology of why “authorities” feel a need to immediately reject challenges to established positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do bacteria damage their hosts? After bacteria bypass the immune system, bacterial virulence enables a host to replicate and propagate within a host in part by demolishing or escaping host defenses. Bacterial pathogens possess an array of specific killer mechanisms that submit virulence and the capacity to intercept host defence mechanisms. Mechanisms of virulence are often mediated by the subversion of normal aspects of host biology. Also, recently, three novels but wide themes have emerged in the field of bacterial virulence: a bacterial killing mechanism, secretion systems and pathogenicity islands. So, pathogen changes the host function so as to support the pathogen's survival or multiplication. Such subversion is often mediated by the specific interaction of bacterial effector molecules with host-encoded proteins and other molecules. Escherichia coli is a considerable and diverse micro alive. E. coli needs only to acquire a mix of mobile genetic elements to become a pathogen capable of causing diseases. The worldwide burden of these diseases is staggering, with hundreds of millions alive affected annually. E. coli strains have been well a bacteria model, and each uses an arsenal of virulence and toxin to subvert host cellular functions to reenforce its virulence. This review focuses on the drastic and different pathogenic mechanisms that are used by various E. coli strains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The germ theory of infectious disease, which developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is often considered a pivotal breakthrough in modern science, medicine, biology, and public health. The germ theory provided a new way to study disease in laboratory, clinical, and community settings, and a new rationale for public health intervention. This article explores two important facets of the germ theory; how the physical techniques and methods of studying germs in laboratories were taught to the first generation of doctors, and how the germ theory was communicated to diverse publics in clinical and community settings. Drawing on the concept of transnational science, I argue that late nineteenth and early twentieth debates around the laboratory practices of bacteriology and the public reception of the germ theory help us to understand the deeper ways that biomedical scientific knowledge is created, constrained, and communicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Writing in the fall of 1830, in the period immediately following France's révolution de juillet , Thomas De Quincey predicts the imminent breakdown of social order in Britain. In his political writing for Blackwood's Magazine over the course of this period, he consistently frames the threat of French-style revolution in terms of the body politic and its vulnerability to contagion, often playing on the meaning of a country's "constitution." In 1831, upon the introduction of the Reform Bill, his worst fears appear to have been confirmed, and he now presents the upcoming revolution almost as a fait accompli. De Quincey's dire predictions fit into a larger framework of nineteenth-century alarmism surrounding contagion, "sympathy," and the collective action of the mob. This article examines the presence and influence of these concepts in De Quincey's political writing for Blackwood's over the period of 1830 to 1832, the year the Bill was successfully passed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health defines the nation—since the nineteenth century, the liberal democratic states in the West had been compulsive about the nation's health, albeit, at the same time, they were much repulsive towards the health of the colonies, except the white enclaves where sanitary improvement was prioritized more than that of native towns. It was only after the germination of germ theory that colonial states took the health of the 'colonized' into account on a serious note. Nevertheless, these whirling ideas, debates, approaches and colonial encounters regarding health and hygiene shaped Gandhi's perception on body, sanitation and nationalism. The Gandhian way of equating Swaraj with the cleanliness of mind, body and soul, i.e., 'Constructive Programme', was in contrast to the 'Obstructive Programme' like civil disobedience. To Gandhi, a nation could truly attain Swaraj by cleansing the self and the 'others'. The bodies, previously 'colonized', were now 'nationalized' through the Constructive Programme and health directives. This article seeks to explore those Gandhian narratives on sanitation and health and the way in which the notion of Swaraj was enmeshed with the emerging health education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Bodies and Lives in Victorian England: Science, Sexuality, and the Affliction of Being Female" is a book that explores women's experiences in Victorian England using a multidisciplinary approach. The authors, Pamela K. Stone and Lise Shapiro Sanders, draw on various sources such as archaeological findings, demographic data, and published works to examine the lives of women during this time period. However, the book has been criticized for its lack of precision in distinguishing between England and Britain, as well as its oversimplification of scientific developments and historical events. Additionally, some topics are treated briefly or inaccurately, and the book fails to acknowledge the complexities of women's experiences and the challenges of historical interpretation. Despite these shortcomings, the book raises important questions about periodization, categorization, and the analysis of evidence, making it a valuable resource for students studying Victorian women. [Extracted from the article]

Since the early twentieth century, a number of physicians and professional historians have argued for the integration of the history of medicine into both medical education and clinical practice. After the supplanting of the humoral model of medicine in favor of the germ theory of disease in the late nineteenth century, medical school administrators have repeatedly asked medical historians for their rationale for studying "outdated science" in medical training programs beyond antiquarianism and knowledge for knowledge's sake. However, a number of arguments can be adduced for the use and relevance of the history of medicine, including the observations that history: 1) provides examples of inspiring or highly ethical individuals who can serve as role models in practitioner identity formation; 2) helps to develop critical analytical skills and other modes of humanistic thought and behavior directly relevant to patient care (e.g. empathy); 3) promotes culturally-competent care, since history informs culture; 4) encourages inquiry into the sociocultural factors that affect the development of modern medical ecosystems; 5) provides a philosophical tradition for critiquing ethics in the medical profession. This contribution specifically traces the potential uses of Islamic medical history in the clinic and medical schools in Muslim-majority countries, primarily in the Middle East. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mystical causes of diseases related with the Igbo traditional belief system are briefly investigated in this research. The specific goals are to look at mystical/spiritual reasons and techniques of fighting diseases, as well as their benefits and drawbacks in terms of disease therapy. For data analysis, the study used a qualitative phenomenological research design and a descriptive approach. Personal interviews were the major source of data collecting, whereas library materials were the secondary source. According to the study, several mystical forces in Igbo cosmology, sorcerers, Ogbanje, curses arising from the violation of taboos and oaths are to be blamed for untimely deaths and sicknesses befalling people. As a result, even in the face of western Germ theory, the Igbo belief in mystical causes of disease has proven that Germ theory, as far as the Igbo traditional conception of disease causation is concerned, does not satisfy the Igbo belief in what causes diseases, as some diseases have defied western medication. The study proposes, among other things, that hospitals in Nigeria should take into account mystical agents as well as pathogenic agents in order to provide proper and adequate treatment for the people who believe in such traditional approached. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with infectious disease threats, the global pork industry and the state have prioritised biosecurity in order to maintain porcine proliferation. Techniques such as good sanitation and surveillance are deemed necessary to ensure animal health. Rooted in germ theory, biosecurity regards disease as an incursion of pathogens from the outside. By drawing distinctions between healthy and diseased bodies, biosecurity regimes appear to represent an anthropocentric desire to control life through spatial enclosure. However, recent work on health geographies has revealed that health is a multifaceted configuration of changing relationships that often escape the purview of biosecurity. Critical studies have pointed out that the management of animal health relies less on any uniform understanding of disease and more on situated veterinary knowledge. This paper seeks to extend this body of work by emphasising inter‐species bodily encounters and earthly elements of the weather‐world. To elucidate this, I draw on recent research into atmosphere and affect, thereby developing the idea of pathological atmospheres. With reference to ethnographical work conducted in veterinary laboratories and commercial pig farms in Taiwan, I point out that a vet's situated expertise is conditioned by their ability to sense and respond to the atmospheric milieu in which they are immersed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microbiology's ecological turn, as it shifts its gaze from the individual microbe to the entanglement and ubiquity of microbial life, is transforming conceptions of human nature and disease in the sciences and humanities. Both the fields of Christian theological anthropology and medical anthropology are tuning in to these microbiological shifts for their reformative possibilities. Meanwhile, practical resistance to these shifts in recent pandemic responses suggest that forces greater than just the "pure science" of microbiology are informing attachments to hyper-modern or Pasteurian epidemiologies and radically independent, buffered views of the self. This essay explores the roots of such resistance. It investigates the interplay of shifts in theological anthropology and disease theories. Cultural anthropology and critical studies offer accounts of epidemiology's fraught relationship to a history of colonialism, racialization, and vilification of pathogens and pathogenicized humans. This essay adds a theological analysis of the historical entanglement of perspectives on disease and Christian doctrine, which bears on the present pandemic response. It illuminates the ways some Christians "benefit" from germ theory's influence. Germ theory interrupts key Christian doctrine (especially theodicy) that makes Christian theology resistant to relational accounts of being human. Germ theory's theological reshaping of Christian teaching may also encourage the current resistance to more relational pandemic responses known as One Health strategies. While reformative and more realistic possibilities of emergent and entangled multispecies accounts of humanity's microbiality are ample and apt, they must account for the ways in which microbiology has never been epidemiological without also being colonial and theological. In other words, this essay explores the smallest and most reviled "animals" in relationship to Christian conceptions of sin, contagion, and evil as groundwork for engaging humanity's micro-animality and diseases' relational aspects. To conclude, I offer four modest suggestions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Istanbul Commerce University Journal of Social Sciences / İstanbul Ticaret Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Istanbul Commerce University Journal of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the establishment and operation of the Portsmouth Grove Hospital during the Civil War, highlighting the crucial role played by nurses like Katherine Prescott Wormeley, the conditions and medical challenges faced by patients, advancements in medical care and infrastructure during the era, and the significant impact of the hospital system on treating wounded soldiers.

Copyright of Advancements of Microbiology is the property of Sciendo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The question of whether SARS‐CoV‐2 is mainly transmitted by droplets or aerosols has been highly controversial. We sought to explain this controversy through a historical analysis of transmission research in other diseases. For most of human history, the dominant paradigm was that many diseases were carried by the air, often over long distances and in a phantasmagorical way. This miasmatic paradigm was challenged in the mid to late 19th century with the rise of germ theory, and as diseases such as cholera, puerperal fever, and malaria were found to actually transmit in other ways. Motivated by his views on the importance of contact/droplet infection, and the resistance he encountered from the remaining influence of miasma theory, prominent public health official Charles Chapin in 1910 helped initiate a successful paradigm shift, deeming airborne transmission most unlikely. This new paradigm became dominant. However, the lack of understanding of aerosols led to systematic errors in the interpretation of research evidence on transmission pathways. For the next five decades, airborne transmission was considered of negligible or minor importance for all major respiratory diseases, until a demonstration of airborne transmission of tuberculosis (which had been mistakenly thought to be transmitted by droplets) in 1962. The contact/droplet paradigm remained dominant, and only a few diseases were widely accepted as airborne before COVID‐19: those that were clearly transmitted to people not in the same room. The acceleration of interdisciplinary research inspired by the COVID‐19 pandemic has shown that airborne transmission is a major mode of transmission for this disease, and is likely to be significant for many respiratory infectious diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similarly, Barker's discussion of I Uncle Tom's Cabin i adaptations and I East Lynne i , a consumption drama that played on both sides of the Atlantic from the mid to late nineteenth century, aligns the portrayal of consumptive children with the medical belief held by some at the time that tuberculosis was a hereditary disease. The stage consumptive on the nineteenth-century stage, Barker notes throughout her study, was overwhelmingly white, despite the fact that "Indigenous peoples and people of color were dying of tuberculosis in huge numbers in the transatlantic world" (16). Reading the warnings of critics in Britain and America against these plays, Barker suggests that I Camille i and the consumptive genre to which it belonged proved contagious in their own right. [Extracted from the article]

Pasteur's work on fermentations has variously influenced the conception that veterinarians had of the origin of virulent diseases. Jean-Baptiste Chauveau asserted as early as 1866 the specificity of contagious diseases and their exogenous origin. Henri Bouley was initially a supporter of the spontaneity of these diseases. He became an advocate of the germ theory when Pasteur unambiguously demonstrated the causal role of anthrax bacteridia in 1877. Pasteur then had a fruitful collaboration with veterinarians during his work on chicken cholera, swine erysipelas, contagious pleuropneumonia and rabies. After Pasteur's experience at Pouilly-le-Fort, Henri Bouley and Edmond Nocard, a disciple of Pasteur, were strong advocates for the adoption of vaccinations by veterinarians and farmers. Nocard's work on various contagious animal diseases greatly contributed to the foundation of veterinary microbiology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 19th century, the applications of the scientific discoveries of Louis Pasteur to medicine had difficulty in imposing themselves within the French medical community and its National Academy. Among those concerning infectious diseases, their prevention by hygiene and their etiology by microbes are described here. Louis Pasteur found it difficult to convince and had to fight, to show through the surgical practice of asepsis and examples of infections induced in animal models (anthrax), the modes of transmission of germs and their pathogenicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The human gut microbiome is acknowledged as being associated with homeostasis and the pathogenesis of several diseases. Conventional culture techniques are limited in that they cannot culture the commensals; however, next-generation sequencing has facilitated the discovery of the diverse and delicate microbial relationship in body sites and blood. Increasing evidence regarding the blood microbiome has revolutionized the concept of sterility and germ theory in circulation. Among the types of microbial communities in the blood, bacteriomes associated with many health conditions have been thoroughly investigated. Blood bacterial profiles in healthy subjects are identified as the eubiotic blood bacteriome, whereas the dysbiotic blood bacteriome represents the change in bacterial characteristics in subjects with diseases showing deviations from the eubiotic profiles. The blood bacterial characteristics in each study are heterogeneous; thus, the association between eubiotic and dysbiotic blood bacteriomes and health and disease is still debatable. Thereby, this review aims to summarize and discuss the evidence concerning eubiotic and dysbiotic blood bacteriomes characterized by next-generation sequencing in human studies. Knowledge pertaining to the blood bacteriome will transform the concepts around health and disease in humans, facilitating clinical implementation in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In I The Cancer Problem i , Agnes Arnold-Forster reconstructs the rich discourse surrounding cancer's cures and causes in nineteenth-century Britain - demonstrating how cancer I became i modern. Arnold-Forster has written a simulating and broad-ranging survey of cancer and its causes in nineteenth-century Britain that will reward readers in the history of medicine, public health, and beyond. Cancer, Modernity, Surgery, Affect, Nineteenth-century Britain. [Extracted from the article]

Tuberculosis has been present in the world's population for as long as there has been written language. It is a disease known to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and Hebrews, but its etiology eluded the world for thousands of years. Even after the germ theory was accepted and early scientists hypothesized a pathogen as the cause, the identity of the sleeping killer in society remained a mystery. That is until Robert Koch was able to grow and visualize Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Koch introduced his Old Tuberculin solution as a diagnostic therapy of tuberculosis (TB), with the intent to reduce the number of infected persons and stop its spread. Old Tuberculin's ability to treat TB proved minimal, but its diagnostic potential paved the way for more effective tests from von Pirquet, Calmette, Wolff-Eisner, and Mantoux. Florence Seibert set out to identify and purify the active principle in Koch's Old Tuberculin and ended up creating purified protein derivative (PPD) tuberculin which is still used as the standard for the tuberculin skin test (TST). Interferon-c release assays (IGRAs) are a more modern diagnostic tool for detecting latent TB infection that offer some benefits (and some disadvantages) to TST. TSTs and IGRAs can determine if an individual has been infected with M. tuberculosis but are equally unable to predict progression to active tuberculosis, the diagnosis of which relies on assessment of clinical symptoms, radiographic imaging, and sample culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global doubling of human life expectancy between 1850 and 1950 is arguably the most important thing that ever happened, undergirding massive improvements in human life and lifestyles while also contributing to insectageddons, septic oceans, and collapsing ecosystems. The story of that global doubling is typically told as a series of medical breakthroughs—Jenner and vaccination, Lister and antisepsis, Snow and germ theory, and Fleming and penicillin—but the lion's share of the credit belongs to urban planning based upon good data. Until we had sophisticated systems of death registration, we could not conceive of the health problems we were facing, much less solve them. Today, the greatest threat we face is not disease but data denial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merton also worked with Paul Felix Lazarsfeld (1901-1976) on audience research for radio and television from which Merton went on to perfect the idea of the focused group interview. Crothers, Charles Reintroducing Robert K. Merton London and New York: Abingdon: Routledge ISBN 20219780367409678 (pbk) pp: xii + 174 Robert K. Merton (1910-2003) is an enigma. In conclusion, Crothers's personal connections with Merton and with Merton's wife Harriet Zuckerman, his comprehensive reading of Merton and detailed understanding of Merton's location in American sociology have produced a comprehensive study of Merton's oeuvre. [Extracted from the article]

The article offers a look into domestic hygiene, disease prevention and domesticity in Turkey during the 1930s. Topics discussed are sanitary advice in household management that stimulated awareness of dust, germs and disease, association of domestic hygiene with child care and mortality, and anxieties evoked by advertisements of household goods and sanitary products that eventually raised hygiene standards of middle-class women.

From a chronological perspective, Nixon's and Chen's works complement each other perfectly: Nixon picks up the cultural history of contagion at the exact point at which Chen stops. Kept from All Contagion: Germ Theory, Disease, and the Dilemma of Human Contact in Late Nineteenth-Century Literature, by Kari Nixon; pp. x + 263. [Extracted from the article]

This essay focuses on a thirteen-inch-high reclining chair with a carved walnut frame, brass base, and emerald green velvet upholstery in the Winterthur Museum collection [ 1 and 2 ]. Created by Ira Salmon of Boston circa 1866, the chair is a patent model and part of Salmon's efforts to win a professional reputation as a dentist early in his career. This essay documents the transformation of dentistry in America from an itinerant practice in the early republic to a professionalized career in the mid-nineteenth century. It offers evidence of how the material world of dentists changed when tools of the profession became standardized and mass produced. Developing technologies facilitated reclining chairs suited for newfangled operative techniques. The essay also focuses on a period that anticipates the development of germ theory in the early twentieth century and the sterilization of the dentist's office. In this mid-nineteenth century moment, the aesthetics of dentist offices, and their chairs' designs, bridge a divide between the traditional values associated with dentists and those ascribed to dentists today. The patent model demonstrates Salmon's desire to appeal to his clients' interest by capturing the dramatic potential of a dentist's visit while satisfying their desire for comfort and expectation of skilful technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]