When new infectious diseases emerge, how do scientist determine which microbe is the cause? This course explores how scientists determine what causes an infectious disease and the challenges they underwent to convinced others (including a scientist who drank a flask of bacteria in order to convince his colleges that bacteria can cause ulcers). We discuss how the original onset of typhoid fever could have been prevented if the general public understood how infectious diseases are spread and how the development of new tools allowed scientific philosophy to evolved to accept the presence of living organisms that are too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Pre-requisites: It is recommended that students have a basic understanding bacterial structures (covered in BIED 201 – Why should we care about infectious diseases?).

Not offered this term