Medical Mycology Today

Although medical mycology is recognized by its practitioners as an independent area of professional commitment, its roots can be traced to a broad range of medical and biological disciplines. It incorporates elements from such diverse fields as dermatology, genetics, pathology and histopathology, infectious disease, veterinary medicine, mycology, immunology, microbiology, epidemiology, and more recently, cellular and molecular biology. It follows that the term “medical mycologist” is an imprecise one, and does not adequately indicate origins and spheres of interest of those who work in the field.Medical mycology is perhaps best viewed as a mosaic rather than an amalgam, the cement which binds its component parts together being mycology itself. It is an interest in the fungi, their products and their activities which constitutes the single unifying element that links medical mycologists and their endeavours throughout the world.In this presentation, I wish to concentrate on medical mycology as it is today. The history of its development is of equal relevance to an understanding of the subject is the history of its development, but I propose to explore this topic more fully in my Presidential Address at the 11th ISHAM Congress in Montreal next year.