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Any further progress to the idea of a microbial disease
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depended on the view that diseases didn't transform
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from one into another.
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Before the Paris School, it was common to believe,
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for example, that cholera-- to take one disease--
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was simply a heightened form of endemic summer diarrhea.
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It wasn't a specific disease,
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and it grew out of another preexisting condition.
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The germ theory depended instead on the conviction
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that there are stable, unchanging disease entities,
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that each one is specific and has a specific microbial cause.
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But the followers of Louis--Pierre Louis,that is--