Introduction: "The germ theory again" : disease, ideology, and the possibilities of biotic life in the world of antibiotic purity
Keep bleeding : plague, vaccination debates, and the necessity of leaky boundaries in Defoe's Journal of the plague year and Shelley's The last man
"A speculative idea" : childbed fever, early germ theory debates, and (en)gendered speculation in Henry James's Washington Square
Separation and suffocation : tuberculosis, etiological uncertainty, and female friendship in women's fiction
Tainted love : venereal disease, morality, and the contagious disease acts in Ibsen's Ghosts and Hardy's The woodlanders and Jude the obscure
Humanity's waste : typhoid fever, the failure of isolation, and the development of probiotics in three late-century works
Conclusion: Shuffling within our mortal coil.