Bakteriologie und Moderne

What does one learn about the history and culture of modernity when viewed from the seemingly marginal perspective of bacteriology? And how does this science itself become "readable" in terms of cultural history when the narrow horizon of traditional history of science is transcended in favor of a history of knowledge? The texts collected in this volume show how bacteriology as a science could only emerge under very specifically modern conditions-discourses, institutions, and techniques-and they examine how bacteriology, with its concepts and analytical procedures, has profoundly shaped the modern image of the body and disease, but also of borders and migratory movements, of nations and wars. In the process, it becomes clear that the talk of the "invisible enemy", scientifically founded by bacteriologists, became a centrist in the 20th century.