Some of the most vivid and memorable lectures I sat through in medical school were about bacteriology.  Our professor was a woman who was a consultant to the World Health Organization and who returned from assignments with dramatic first person stories about how she had collected trachoma samples from children in darkest Africa, and would thus help prevent their blindness.

She told us about Cholera, a horrible disease that killed quickly by diarrhea and subsequent dehydration.  A disease of poor hygiene that was found where people lived in congested settings and hygiene was tough to maintain. Did not even need antibiotics to save most of the lives; just hydration and electrolytes.  An illness apparently easy to prevent; there were pills to sterilize the water, simple public health interventions. But none of us were likely to ever see it.  We would all practice in civilized countries, like France. Vive la France. Read more on How Cholera Showed Up In Haiti…