Choleric Fictions: Epidemiology, Medical Authority, and An Enemy of the People

In its dramatic use of the emerging sciences of sanitation and prophylaxis, An Enemy of the People extends the medical field of Ghosts and other early plays to the triumphs and promises of the newly implemented germ theory that was transforming the medical and social landscape of disease. In its exploration of the culturally ascendant man of science, it addresses the communal and psychologically problematic dimensions of a missionary reformism in a society resistant to its demands.