FREE: MICROBES AND MORALS

The listing, MICROBES AND MORALS has ended.

The 'Introduction' notes that unpleasant or revolting subjects are often written about for thrills or entertainment. Murder is the most common, both as fiction and as true crime stories. Diseases are less common, and so are catastrophes, great and little. The absence of books on VD reflects the idea that it is dirty. Books will often talk of dining, but never of elimination. You are more likely to find books about influenza, tuberculosis, bubonic plague, cholera, mentionable diseases which affect the masses and their rulers.

Rosebury says disease and parasites are as ancient as life itself. Different species tend to adapt to one another, like prey and predator. Most microbes or viruses are similar to others that do not cause diseases in mankind. The peculiarity of venereal diseases is they can only survive in humans, and are spread by sexual contact. Modern disease control derives from the germ theory discovered by Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch. Prior to then disease was "caused" by supernatural or fantastic origins. Cholera was caused by bad drinking water, typhoid fever from unwashed hands (p.10). The bubonic plague in 1679 Vienna resulted in the song "Ach, du lieber Augustin" (p.11). Epidemic diseases were believed due to divine wrath as punishment for wickedness (I Samuel 5). [Do some people have a similar view when it comes to the economy?] Thucydides described the Great Plague of Athens, but wouldn't speculate as to its origin (p.73). Fracastor first used the word virus to denote the germ of contagion (p.34). Rosebury suggests that the "leprosy" of Medieval times was really syphilis (p.47). Leprosy is bacteriologically related to tuberculosis. Chapter 8 discusses polio, and its spread with the wider use of the flush toilet (p.77)!