History of Science and Technology Colloquium

The nineteenth-century epidemic erupted at a moment when both popular and scientific ideas of disease -- in humans, plants, and animals -- were changing dramatically. Scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Anton de Bary and their disciples argued for a pathogenic model of disease. The scientists who visited the devastated coffee farms in India and Ceylon explained the epidemic in pathogenic terms, repudiating earlier models of disease that focused on the susceptibility of hosts. While the coffee planters accepted aspects of the pathogenic model of disease, they continued to insist that host susceptibility played an important role in shaping the epidemics. The coffee planters' field observations ultimately changed the scientists' strictly pathogen-centered model of disease.