Animalcules : the activities, impacts, and investigators of microbes / Bernard Dixon.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

I : Touching life at many points -- Disseminators aloft? -- Pantoea and the locust -- The Microbiology of art -- Why do they do it? -- Out of the blue -- Reflections on cellulolysis -- Jelly from space? -- Botox and dairy cows -- Fiction, fact, and reality -- Microbiology for gastronomes -- The Double life of escherichia coli -- Not all cigars and caviar -- Microbial versatility in Berlin -- Whither psychoneuroimmunology? -- II : The Ecological context -- Communal diversity in biofilms -- Biofilm life -- Our most abundant coterrestrials -- Heliobacter from the seas? -- Selective agencies -- Natural disaster microbiology -- Foot-and-mouth folly? -- Ecology lessons -- Biocides in the kitchen -- Conjectures and realities -- Exterminating pathogens -- Learning from Denmark -- Protozoa and lurking pathogens -- What is virulence -- III : The Human context -- Questionable experiments -- Lyme disease : the public dimension -- Blatent opportunism -- Bioscience embattled -- "Playing God" -- Microbes in the media -- A Little learning ... -- Spotlight on acetaldehyde -- Measles, polio, and conscience -- Myxomatosis : grim questions -- Rationalizing vaccination -- A European furor -- Bioremediation and greenery -- The Citation game -- IV : Personalia -- Antony van Leeuwenhoek, Clifford Dobell, and Robert Hooke -- Robert Koch and his postulates -- Hideyo Noguchi, Max Theiler, and Yellowjack -- Ren�e Dubos's mirage of health -- Ferdinand Cohn, neglected visionary -- Johannes Fibiger, a Dane to remember -- Frederick Twort, codiscoverer of phages -- Alick Isaacs and interferon -- Dissenters : Max von Pettenkofer and Friedrich Wolter -- Gerhard Domagk and the origins of sulfa -- Cecil Hoare's eponymous organism -- Ants and Fred Hoyle's challenge to Darwinism -- pioneers of American microbiology -- V : Doing microbiology -- At the level of cowpats -- Fishy business -- Science �a la mode? -- "Wherever they are found ..." -- There's more to do -- Self-frustration -- Genomics and innovation in antibiotics -- The Relevance of taxonomy -- Yeasts are complex ... -- ... and yeasts are versatile -- Resounding banalities -- Microbiology present and future -- Looking back -- A Global challenge.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (ASM, viewed September 15, 2014).