Hospital Infection: From Miasmas to MRSA

by Graham A. J. Ayliffe , Mary P. English

• ISBN13: 9780521531788
• ISBN10: 0521531780
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-07-07
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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 from mediaeval times, when patients endured verminous conditions, to the present day; 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 pivotal roles of key personalities such as Joseph Lister, Florence Nightingale, Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch are highlighted, and the history of this subject illuminates not only why hospitals and infections have had such an intimate and long relationship but one that seems destined to continue well into the future.

Author Biography

Professor Graham Ayliffe is well known around the world and he is the author of several highly regarded books on hospital infections and their control Dr Mary English is well known for her work in medical mycology and for her expertise in the epidemiology of fungal disease. She is also the author of numerous publications on medical mycology and two biographies of Victorian biologists

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
Preface	xi
Theories of infection: from magic to miasmas	1	(9)
The Middle Ages to the seventeenth century: hospitals and infection	10	(14)
The eighteenth century: hospitals and infection	24	(13)
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: typhus in military and civilian hospitals	37	(15)
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: lying-in hospitals and puerperal fever	52	(16)
The nineteenth century before Lister: military hospitals and wound infection, civilian hospitals and `hospitalism'	68	(19)
Theories of infection: from miasmas to microbes	87	(17)
Antisepsis to asepsis	104	(14)
The twentieth century: hospitals and miscellaneous infections	118	(16)
The twentieth century: the emergence of antimicrobial chemotherapy and the demise of the haemolytic streptococcus	134	(7)
The twentieth century: sterilization, sterile services and disinfection	141	(12)
The mid-twentieth century: the emergence of antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus	153	(10)
The mid-twentieth century: Gram-negative bacilli	163	(8)
The control of staphylococcal and Gram-negative infections	171	(15)
The surveillance of infection and the organization of infection control	186	(14)
Emerging diseases at the end of the twentieth century	200	(19)
The past, present and future	219	(17)
References	236	(29)
Bibliography	265	(2)
Index	267