Infective Endocarditis in the Antibiotic Era

IMPORTANT contributions to our knowledge and understanding of infective endocarditis were made by a number of students of this disease in the first third of this century. Thayer,1 among others, preferred the term infective endocarditis for this disorder, giving it equal emphasis with the more common designation bacterial endocarditis. We have chosen to employ Thayer's terminology because a significant aspect of the changing picture of this disease is an increasing involvement of agents such as fungi and even rickettsias; the term bacterial endocarditis, therefore, is not strictly applicable.In 1955 Kerr2 summarized all the significant information concerning subacute bacterial . . .