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The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity

Literary-rhetorical devices like figurative language and analogy can help explain concepts that exceed our capacity to grasp intuitively. It is not surprising these devices are used to discuss virulence, pathogenesis, and antibiotics. Allusions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Servitje, Lorenzo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824619/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33379290
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics10010019
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author Servitje, Lorenzo
author_facet Servitje, Lorenzo
author_sort Servitje, Lorenzo
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description Literary-rhetorical devices like figurative language and analogy can help explain concepts that exceed our capacity to grasp intuitively. It is not surprising these devices are used to discuss virulence, pathogenesis, and antibiotics. Allusions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seem to be used with particular frequency in research pertaining to pathogens, especially in studies contemporary with our evolving understanding of antibiotic resistance. More recent references to the text have appeared in research parsing definitions of virulence and acknowledging the role of anti-virulence in future therapeutics. While it is obvious that scientists invoke Stevenson’s story for stylistic purposes, its use could go beyond the stylistic—and might even generate rhetorical and imaginative possibilities for framing research. This perspective discusses the first published allusion to Jekyll and Hyde in reference to virulence and pathogenesis; comments on a select number of specific instances of Jekyll and Hyde in contemporary scientific literature; briefly contextualizes the novel; and concludes with the implications of a more productive engagement with humanistic disciplines in the face of antibiotic resistance.
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spelling pubmed-78246192021-01-24 The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity Servitje, Lorenzo Antibiotics (Basel) Perspective Literary-rhetorical devices like figurative language and analogy can help explain concepts that exceed our capacity to grasp intuitively. It is not surprising these devices are used to discuss virulence, pathogenesis, and antibiotics. Allusions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde seem to be used with particular frequency in research pertaining to pathogens, especially in studies contemporary with our evolving understanding of antibiotic resistance. More recent references to the text have appeared in research parsing definitions of virulence and acknowledging the role of anti-virulence in future therapeutics. While it is obvious that scientists invoke Stevenson’s story for stylistic purposes, its use could go beyond the stylistic—and might even generate rhetorical and imaginative possibilities for framing research. This perspective discusses the first published allusion to Jekyll and Hyde in reference to virulence and pathogenesis; comments on a select number of specific instances of Jekyll and Hyde in contemporary scientific literature; briefly contextualizes the novel; and concludes with the implications of a more productive engagement with humanistic disciplines in the face of antibiotic resistance. MDPI 2020-12-28 /pmc/articles/PMC7824619/ /pubmed/33379290 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics10010019 Text en © 2020 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Perspective
Servitje, Lorenzo
The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
title The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
title_full The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
title_fullStr The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
title_full_unstemmed The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
title_short The Not-So-Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in Antibiotic Research: An Interdisciplinary Opportunity
title_sort not-so-strange case of dr. jekyll and mr. hyde in antibiotic research: an interdisciplinary opportunity
topic Perspective
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7824619/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33379290
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/antibiotics10010019
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