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A pathogen is an organism or virus that causes a disease. Finding the pathogen behind the 1918 influenza pandemic was a major goal for scientists from that era, because then it would be possible to target the pathogen with a vaccine or cure.
Pathogen Quotes in The Great Influenza
The The Great Influenza quotes below are all either spoken by Pathogen or refer to Pathogen. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 8
Quotes
In the days before antibiotics, an infection launched a race to the death between the pathogen and the immune system. Sometimes a victim would become desperately ill; then, suddenly and almost miraculously, the fever would break and the victim would recover. This “resolution by crisis” occurred when the immune system barely won the race, when it counterattacked massively and successfully.
But once the body survives an infection, it gains an advantage. For the immune system epitomizes the saying that that which does not kill you makes you stronger.
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Chapter 23
Quotes
Lewis knew full well that little of what he was doing was good science. It was all, or nearly all, based on informed guesswork. He only worked harder.
As he worked, the society about him teetered on the edge of collapse.
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Chapter 35
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The greatest questions remained the simplest ones: What caused influenza? What was the pathogen? Was Pfeiffer right when he identified a cause and named it Bacillus influenzae? And if he was not right, then what did cause it? What was the killer?
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Pathogen Term Timeline in The Great Influenza
The timeline below shows where the term Pathogen appears in The Great Influenza. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 8
Before antibiotics, it used to be a race to the death between pathogens and the immune system. Once someone survives an infection, however, their immune system is better...
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Chapter 17
...it. Krusen heard news that Paul Lewis might be on the verge of identifying the pathogen for the new influenza, meaning a serum and vaccine could soon follow. Krusen only focused...
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Chapter 22
...what was the pathology (what did it do to the body)? Third, what was the pathogen (what microorganism caused it)?
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...a strict quarantine, which only slowed it down at best. The third question, about the pathogen, was the trickiest to answer but provided perhaps the best hope of effectively combatting the...
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...with what they already knew, starting with the use of disinfectants to get rid of pathogens outside the body. One scientist named Richard Pfeiffer, working under Koch, believed that he discovered...
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Chapter 23
Park treated research like a war, investing all the lab’s resources into investigating the pathogen of the new influenza variant. But at first he was frustrated, as people in the...
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Chapter 34
...most crowded areas saw the worst spread. Still, one major gap in knowledge remained: the pathogen was still unknown, despite the efforts of the best scientists from around the world.
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Chapter 35
...and into the 1930s. In 1931, Pfeiffer himself still believed he’d found the most likely pathogen, although Welch believed the real culprit may have been an unknown virus.
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