Stalking Microbes

Nothing so quickly threatens health than an infection, the interaction of a person with a microbe that favors the invading pathogen. Within hours the invisible predators can overwhelm the human host and cause devastating illness and death. The riveting stories of infections in sick people and sick populations are lucidly told by an expert clinician and epidemiologist, Richard Wenzel. His essays describe the personalities and histories of the microbes themselves, struggling to stay alive in the host. He vividly outlines the reactions of those infected and the efforts of Medicine to prevent and treat life-threatening illnesses. Stalking Microbes is an account of a physician who listens to patients in order to make the right diagnosis and who listens to the organisms to understand the causes of epidemics. Along the way he teaches the reader about caring, about curiosity, about independent thinking, the strengths and shortcomings of current Medical practice, and about life itself.