ABSTRACT
The preceding chapters have offered us challenging insights into the development of the study of diseases and their impact on human health. This final chapter adopts a contemplative stance and considers the future. For fifty years, microbiology has dwindled to become a ‘Cinderella’ science. Young biologists have been discouraged from entering the discipline, since it has been tacitly assumed that the major infections were known and relatively little work remained to be accomplished. Virologists, when retired, found they were not replaced (Ford 2000a; Slade, personal communication 2001).
