Spirochaetes, Serology and Salvarsan
Ludwick Fleck and the Construction of Medical Knowledge about Syphilis
Description:... In this particular case, the insufficiency of Latour's own answer to the question he raised is clearly revealed: the clinical introduction of Salvarsan involved much more than simply transplanting laboratory conditions to the outside world, it also involved the 'normalization of the object' (Knoff-Cetina), legal, social and political intervention, and continued experimentation with the medicine after its commercial introduction (the thesis of 'society as laboratory'). Chapter VIII does not deal with a particular episode in the history of syphilology, but offers a reconstruction of the so-called 'serological thought style' which according to Fleck determined the way of thinking and acting of the serologists' collective led by Wassermann.
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