In 1971, I started a fellowship in infectious diseases and medical microbiology at the Channing Laboratory of the Harvard Medical Service at Boston City Hospital. My mentor, Dr. Maxwell Finland, had encouraged me to return there from the Center for Disease Control (as CDC was known then), where I had studied inf- tious diseases epidemiology and hospital-associated infection epidemiology, with the idea that we would review the demographic patterns of bacteremia and several other infections during Dr. Finland s long tenure at the hospital. We did so, but I was surprised to find that he also...