Epidemiologic interactions, complexity, and the lonesome death of Max von Pettenkofer.

Pettenkofer revisited: the life and contributions of Max von Pettenkofer (1818-1901).

If the name of Max von Pettenkofer is remembered at all in America it is probably because he drank live cholera vibrio in apparent defiance of the germ theory and did not fall ill. Yet this act was not a hasty, emotional one but one of strong conviction that more than just the organism is needed to cause disease. It was a beginning of the epidemiologic concept of multiple causation. Pettenkofer...

A Reply to an Address of Prof. Max Von Pettenkofer of Munich

Max von Pettenkofer Award

In August 1892, a cholera outbreak struck Hamburg. In just a few months, 17 000 cases of the illness were recorded resulting in 8600 deaths within a population of about 640 000 (Evans, 1987). At its peak intensity, only a few weeks after the onset, a thousand illnesses and five hundred deaths were reported daily in the city. Intense but short-lived cholera outbreaks had struck Hamburg and other...

Koch ’ s Postulates — Then and Now

T his story begins in the early 1880s. The germ theory of disease was fairly well established, although some experts continued to challenge it. For example, Theodor Billroth (1829– 1894) of Vienna, often called the founding father of abdominal surgery, did not immediately accept the germ theory, but later embraced the concept and became very successful in many pioneering surgeries. Another crit...

Measles virus C protein interferes with interferon beta

* Corresponding author: 12 Max von Pettenkofer-Institute & Gene Center, Feodor-Lynen-Str. 25, D-81377 13 München, Germany 14 E-mail: [email protected] 15 Phone: +49 89 2180 76851; Fax: +49 89 2180 76899 16 17 1 present address: 18 Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, University of 19 California at Santa Barbara, Life Science Building, Santa Barbara, 93106 Cali...