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The article discusses modern medical case histories published between 1600 and 1900, focusing on the use of seriality by the hospital system and its use of tables. The condensing of narrative patient information into tabular form allowed for the creation of quantitive data reporting which would support rhetorical arguments. Other subjects considered include the impact of the history of printing technologies on the history of science, the development of scientific specialization, and the creation of indexes to access knowledge and information in books.

The article focuses on the science of bacteria in its golden age of 1880. On February 9, 1880, Louis Pasteur reported that he had produced a weakened or attenuated culture of microorganism of fowl cholera, which conferred immunity to the disease when inoculated in chickens. According to his principle, a first infection protects against a subsequent one. The article finally argues that, far from excluding variation, much of early bacteriology consisted in manipulating, checking and controlling variability of virulence and other bacterial properties, and that these variations were impressive enough to demand explanation through biological theory and to appear to explain, in turn, aspects of the behavior of infectious disease.

Argues that typhoid policy in early twentieth-century New York City was humane but not social. Intensification of bacteriological hygiene; Choice between the individual and the social as the focus of attention; Social definition of disease and danger; Contest between the concept of powers and liberties.