![]() Figurative language and analogy are literary-rhetorical devices that can help explain concepts that exceed our capacity to grasp intuitively. We should attend to and expand our consideration of how these terms are thought of and written about. Thus, their definitions have, do, and will impact the use of antibiotics and antibiotic-alternative therapies like anti-virulence in the future. Terms like virulence and pathogen define what and how we categorize and respond to microbes in clinical practice and biomedical research. Pathogens can reside in hosts and their microbiome without signs or symptoms, and commensals can harbor both genes that express virulence factors and genes that code for antibiotic resistance mechanisms. And while it is subject to qualitative and quantitative measures, those measures themselves are variable, contingent upon microbe, host, environmental, and social factors-and the entangled interactions amongst them. It is an unusual microbial property because it does not “define an independent determinant of microbial activity, or characteristics” (p. ![]() Virulence, however, has a non-constant quality to it. Casadevall and Pirofski suggest that it “encompasses everything that contributes to making microbes pathogenic” (p. Virulence is a notoriously expansive, mutable term in its uses across different disciplines and over time. 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. 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. More recent references to the text have appeared in research parsing definitions of virulence and acknowledging the role of anti-virulence in future therapeutics. Hyde seem to be used with particular frequency in research pertaining to pathogens, especially in studies contemporary with our evolving understanding of antibiotic resistance. Allusions to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. It is not surprising these devices are used to discuss virulence, pathogenesis, and antibiotics. Literary-rhetorical devices like figurative language and analogy can help explain concepts that exceed our capacity to grasp intuitively.
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