C'est grave, Dr Darwin ?

Although Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and the science of microbes by Louis Pasteur were developped concurrently in the 19th century, they have yet failed to be considered in a holistic way by medical sciences. The author embeds historical facts around the fundamental question why microbes evolve towards an equilibrium where the trade-off between virulence (harm to the host) and fitness (production of microbe offspring) is optimal.