2 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Hungarian physician who discovered in 1847 that doctors washing hands between autopsies and deliveries dramatically reduced childbed fever mortality — and whose discovery was rejected by the medical establishment, leading to his mental breakdown and death, vindicating the importance of institutional courage in science.
William McNeill's history of the role of infectious disease in human history — the first systematic account of how epidemics shaped the rise and fall of civilizations.