Mazzarello Paolo
Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale e Museo per la Storia dell' Università di Pavia, I, Pavia, Italia.
Med Secoli. 2004;16(2):293-316.
This article traces the emergence of the standard for evidence of causation in infectious diseases, from the scientific discoveries on contagion by Agostino Bassi, in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, only after the work of Robert Koch on anthrax and tuberculosis, a set of practical guidelines (Koch's postulates) were acknowledged, to establish rigorous criteria before a microbiologist could claim a strictly causal relationship between microbes and infectious diseases. The methodological and epistemological meaning of these guidelines, and their limits, are discussed in the light of the recent development of microbiology and medicine.
本文追溯了传染病因果关系证据标准的出现，始于19世纪上半叶阿戈斯蒂诺·巴斯德关于传染的科学发现。然而，直到罗伯特·科赫对炭疽病和结核病进行研究之后，一套实用指南（科赫法则）才得到认可，以便在微生物学家能够宣称微生物与传染病之间存在严格因果关系之前确立严格的标准。鉴于微生物学和医学的最新发展，本文讨论了这些指南的方法学和认识论意义及其局限性。
