Rats, lice and history : being a study in biography, which, after twelve preliminary chapters indispensable for the preparation of the lay reader, deals with the life history of typhus fever ... / by Hans Zinsser.

  • Zinsser, Hans, 1878-1940.
Date:
1935
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Rats, lice and history : being a study in biography, which, after twelve preliminary chapters indispensable for the preparation of the lay reader, deals with the life history of typhus fever ... / by Hans Zinsser. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    building, by their own efforts, the things they require. Whenever they find it possible to take advantage of the constructive labors of others, this is the direction of the least resistance. The plant does the work with its roots and its green leaves. The cow eats the plant. Man eats both of them; and bacteria (or investment bankers) eat the man. Complete elucidation would require elaborate technical discussions, but the principle is clear. Life on earth is an endless chain of parasitism which would soon lead to the complete annihilation of all living beings unless the incorruptible workers of the vegetable king¬ dom constantly renewed the supply of suitable nitrogen and carbon compounds which other living things can filch. It is a topic that might lend itself to endless trite moralizing. In the last analysis, man may be defined as a parasite on a vegetable. That form of parasitism which we call infection is as old as animal and vegetable life. In a later chapter we may have occasion to consider its origin; to this we have some clue from the new diseases which appear to be constantly developing as we begin to conquer the old ones. But our chief purpose in writing the biography of one of these diseases is to impress the fact that we are dealing with a phase of man’s history on earth which has received too little attention from poets, artists, and historians. Swords and lances, arrows, machine guns, and even high explosives have had far less power over the fates of the nations than the typhus louse, the plague flea, and the yellow-fever mosquito. Civilizations have re¬ treated from the plasmodium of malaria, and armies