With Koch's announcement in 1882 of his work with the tubercle bacillus, his famous postulates launched the rational world of infectious disease and an abrupt social change--strict patient isolation. The postulates, so successful at their inception, soon began to show some problems, particularly with cholera, which clearly violated some of Koch's requirements. Subsequent studies of other diseas...

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...