FREE NEJM E-TOC    HOME   |   SUBSCRIBE   |   CURRENT ISSUE   |   PAST ISSUES   |   COLLECTIONS   |   Search Term  Advanced Search

Sign in | Get NEJM's E-Mail Table of Contents — Free | Subscribe

Previous Volume 342:1374-1375 May 4, 2000 Number 18 Next

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

	Full Text Purchase this article Add to Personal Archive Add to Citation Manager Notify a Friend E-mail When Cited

By Paul Farmer. 389 pp. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999. $29.95. ISBN 0-520-21544-3.

What causes tuberculosis in humans? In the late 19th century, the German microbiologist Robert Koch thought the answer was unambiguous: the tubercle bacillus, which he discovered in 1882. Since then, Koch's laboratory model of the transmission of infectious disease, subsequently articulated in eponymous postulates, has dominated explanations of the causes of infectious diseases. Nonetheless, as early as the 1890s, some physicians expressed doubt about the adequacy of any laboratory model for explaining the vagaries of communicable disease in humans. For example, during a debate in 1894 on the advisability of public registration of persons with tuberculosis, William Osler observed that . . . [Full Text of this Article]

HOME  |  SUBSCRIBE  |  SEARCH  |  CURRENT ISSUE  |  PAST ISSUES  |  COLLECTIONS  |  PRIVACY  |  TERMS OF USE  |  HELP  |  beta.nejm.org Comments and questions? Please contact us. The New England Journal of Medicine is owned, published, and copyrighted © 2009 Massachusetts Medical Society. All rights reserved.