title: "To rid oneself of the uninvited guest": Robert Koch, Sergei Winogradsky and competing styles of practice in medical microbiology.
abstract: Does an infectious disease have one, singular pathogenic cause, or many interacting causes? In the discipline of medical microbiology, there is no definitive theoretical answer to this question: there, the conditions of aetiological possibility exist in a curious tension. Ever since the late 19th century, the “germ theory of disease”–“one disease, one cause”– has co-existed with a much less well known theory of “multifactorality”–“one disease, many interacting causes”. And yet, in practice, it is always a singular and never a multifactorial aetiology that emerges once the pathogenic world is brought into the field of medical perception. This paper seeks to understand why. Performing a detailed, genealogical reading of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, it foregrounds a set of links that connect the practical diagnostic tools at work within contemporary, 21st century laboratories to the philosophical assumptions at work within late-19th century understandings of the “germ theory of disease”.
authors.affiliation: Loughborough University, UK.
authors.forename: Frederick Thomas
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Attenborough
mesh_terms: D015984:Causality; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history; D060755:Germ Theory of Disease / Q000266:history; D006666:History of Medicine; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D008829:Microbiology / Q000193:education / Q000266:history; D012108:Research Personnel / Q000191:economics / Q000193:education / Q000266:history / Q000523:psychology; D045169:Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome / Q000208:ethnology / Q000266:history