Jails, Microbes, and the Three-Foot Barrier

Abstract

On the binding of an old book on the shelf in my office is imprinted “Common Contagious Diseases — Stimson.”¹ Fifty years ago, when it was published, medical and nonmedical people alike could have told you, without even checking the table of contents, what those diseases were: diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, rubella, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, smallpox, meningococcal meningitis, and poliomyelitis. Now the phrase “common contagious diseases” is obsolete and no longer appears in textbooks about infectious diseases, let alone as the title of a book. Smallpox is gone, and poliomyelitis will soon disappear from the planet. Diphtheria, measles, rubella, . . .