HISTORY OF DISEASE In 1887, Nocard and Mollereau were first to distinguish streptococci that caused epidemics of mastitis in dairy cattle as Streptococcus agalactiae (“without milk”). Decades later, in 1933, Lancefield classified β-hemolytic streptococci into groups based on cell wall…
INTRODUCTION Streptococcus pyogenes (group A β-hemolytic Streptococcus [GAS]) is a Gram-positive bacterial pathogen that has presented an ongoing challenge to scientists and clinicians throughout modern medical history. Descriptions of epidemics of fulminant illnesses in previously healthy individuals date back to…
# Attempts to reduce Staphylococcus aureus disease through vaccination date back to at least 1902, but this pathogen may be unrivaled among others in the sheer scale and scope of unsuccessful vaccine attempts. These challenges have inevitably led many to…
The World Health Assembly certified the eradication of smallpox on May 8, 1980, an event that many hoped would consign smallpox to history. However, the former deputy director of the Soviet Union’s BioPreparat activities has written that manufacturing facilities had…
RUBELLA “German measles is extremely infectious. People catch it very easily. And there’s one thing about it that you’ve got to remember. If a woman contracts it in the first four months of pregnancy it may have a terribly serious…
## Rotaviruses were the leading cause of severe dehydrating diarrhea in infants and young children throughout the world before rotavirus vaccines became available. Most children were infected by the time they reached 2 to 3 years of age. , Even…
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of hospitalization for pneumonia and other lower respiratory tract illnesses (LRTI) in infants and children worldwide. In the United States, it is estimated that approximately 150,000 infants are hospitalized annually with RSV…
“…In the realm of fantasy, consider the statement of Aristotle (otherwise a great philosopher) that only animals and not humans die of rabies… perhaps, optimistically speaking, the 21st century will bring us a glimmer of hope for the successful treatment…
INTRODUCTION History of the Disease Poliomyelitis probably has affected humankind since ancient times, as demonstrated by the depiction in an Egyptian stele dated between 1403 and 1365 BCE, of a “crippled young man, apparently a priest, with a withered and…
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION Not since the introduction of the rabies vaccine by Louis Pasteur was the public interest in vaccines stirred as much as by the development and testing of inactivated poliovirus vaccine (IPV), and not since Albert Einstein had a…