American cardiology: the history of a specialty and its college

environmental or social and onto individual sources of disease. While episodes such as those of "Typhoid" Mary Mallon demonstrate that germ consciousness indeed led public health authorities to focus on individuals, Tomes shows that germ theory was not necessarily less politically progressive than its sanitarian forebear. Using case studies of New York City garment workers and AfricanAmerican anti-TB workers in Atlanta, she demonstrates that the "chain of disease" that linked rich and poor alike was just as easily exploited by contemporary progressive activists as conservative. The final section discusses the waning of germ consciousness under the impact of the apparent decline of infectious diseases and the advent of antibiotics. Yet, as Tomes notes, the resurgence of anti-microbial and anti-social fears during the early stages of the AIDS epidemic reminds us that the gospel has an enduring and ambiguous legacy.