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...

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...