Hospital Infection From Miasmas to MRSA [Paperback]

A history of the intimate and ongoing relationship between hospitals and infections.This is an absorbing account of the continuing battle to control hospital infections, from the earliest days of hospital care when bad air or miasma was thought to be the cause, to the present day and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs' such as MRSA and necrotizing fasciitis. It succeeds on many levels: as a fascinating social history of hospital care; as a survey of the rise, fall and emergence of new nosocomial infections; and as a chronological account of the emergence of medical microbiology and infection control.This is an absorbing account of the continuing battle to control hospital infections, from the earliest days of hospital care when bad air or miasma was thought to be the cause, to the present day and the emergence of antibiotic-resistant 'superbugs' such as MRSA and necrotizing fasciitis. It succeeds on many levels: as a fascinating social history of hospital care; as a survey of the rise, fall and emergence of new nosocomial infections; and as a chronological account of the emergence of medical microbiology and infection control.The continuing battle to control hospital infections has ranged from the earliest days of hospital care when bad air or miasma was thought to be the cause, to the present day emergence of antibiotic-resistant superbugs such as MRSA and necrotizing fasciitis. This social history of hospital care surveys the rise, fall and re-emergence of new nosocomial infections and documents the development of medical microbiology and infection control.Foreword by Bill Newsom; Preface; 1. Theories of infection: magic to miasmas; 2. Middle Ages to seventeenth century: hospitals and infection; 3. The eighteenth century: hospitals and infection; 4. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: typhus in military and civilian hospitals; 5. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: lying-in hospitals and puerperal infection; 6. The nineteenth century befolc*