Pathogens, transmission and control.
12 topics · 13 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
Global Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance
World Health Organization · 2015
Sets out a coordinated international strategy treating drug-resistant infection as a slow-moving pandemic that requires surveillance, stewardship and…
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
On the Antibacterial Action of Cultures of a Penicillium, with Special Reference to their Use in the Isolation of B. influenzae
Alexander Fleming · 1929
Reports that a mould contaminating a culture plate released a substance that dissolved staphylococci while sparing leucocytes and some other…
+5 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae
Edward Jenner · 1798
Reports Jenner's experiments showing that deliberate infection with cowpox protects against smallpox, founding vaccination as a medical practice.
+5 more at this level
12 of 13 works
World Health Organization
Sets out a coordinated international strategy treating drug-resistant infection as a slow-moving pandemic that requires surveillance, stewardship and new drug development together, since no single approach suffices alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Alexander Fleming
Reports that a mould contaminating a culture plate released a substance that dissolved staphylococci while sparing leucocytes and some other organisms, and proposes it first as a laboratory tool for isolating resistant bacteria.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Institute of Medicine
Argues that infectious disease threats are permanent and evolving rather than a problem nearing resolution, driven by microbial adaptation, human behaviour and ecological change, and that surveillance and response systems must be built for a continuously shifting threat rather than a fixed list of diseases.
link checked 17 Sept 2026World Health Organization
Establishes binding international rules requiring states to build core surveillance capacities and to report events that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern, creating the legal architecture for global pandemic response used through COVID-19 and after.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Richard J. Hatchett, Carter E. Mecher & Marc Lipsitch
Compares the timing of school closures, gathering bans and isolation across American cities during the 1918 influenza pandemic to show early, layered, sustained interventions reduced peak mortality.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Na Zhu et al.
Reports the isolation and genome sequence of a new betacoronavirus, later named SARS-CoV-2, from the first cluster of unexplained pneumonia cases in Wuhan, distinguishing it from SARS and MERS.
link checked 17 Sept 2026World Health Organization
Ranks fungal pathogens by public-health threat for the first time, arguing that fungal disease has been systematically under-prioritised relative to bacterial and viral threats despite rising drug resistance and mortality.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Edward Jenner
Reports Jenner's experiments showing that deliberate infection with cowpox protects against smallpox, founding vaccination as a medical practice.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Ignaz Semmelweis
Uses mortality statistics from two Vienna maternity wards to argue childbed fever is carried on physicians' hands from autopsies to birthing mothers, and shows chlorine handwashing nearly eliminates it, years before germ theory explained why.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert Koch
Traces the complete life cycle of the anthrax bacillus, including its resistant spore stage, and shows experimentally that this one organism alone reproduces the disease in new animals, the first rigorous proof linking a specific microbe to a specific illness.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Robert Koch
Demonstrates that a single specific bacillus is the necessary cause of tuberculosis by isolating it, growing it outside the body, and reproducing the disease with it in healthy animals.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Patrick Manson
Organises tropical disease by causative parasite and mode of transmission rather than by symptom, built on Manson's own discovery that mosquitoes carry filarial worms between hosts.
link checked 17 Sept 2026