The Heberden Society Lecture: The Antibiotic Era: Reform, Resistance and the Pursuit of a Rational Therapeutics

Today, as we increasingly turn our attention to antibiotic resistance and the possibility of a “post-antibiotic” era, it is important to consider the historical evolution of forces that promote or impede a “rational” therapeutics. In this talk, Scott Podolsky analyzes the far-reaching history of antibiotics and their use, focusing particularly on seven decades of reformers who have attempted to change how antibiotics are developed and prescribed. Tensions between antibiotic marketing and conservation, and between the education versus regulation of physicians, continue to play out today in medical offices, hospitals, and the halls of Congress alike.

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Weill Cornell Medical College’s Heberden Society.

About the Speaker

Scott Podolsky, M.D., is an Associate Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, and a primary care physician at Massachusetts General Hospital.  He has co-authored Generation of Diversity: Clonal Selection Theory and the Rise of Molecular Immunology (Harvard University Press, 1997), authored Pneumonia before Antibiotics: Therapeutic Evolution and Evaluation in Twentieth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), co-edited Oliver Wendell Holmes: Physician and Man of Letters (Science History Publications, 2009), and most recently authored The Antibiotic Era: Reform, Resistance, and the Pursuit of a Rational Therapeutics (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015).