Kate Womersley

Great men don’t shape history – but tiny microbes do

Jonathan Kennedy explores the (mainly) devastating effects of bacteria in the past – and now, as they proliferate and our resistance diminishes

Miniature from the Toggenburg Bible of 1411 illustrating the plague of boils – the sixth of the ten plagues of Egypt described in the Book of Exodus. [Getty Images] 
issue 08 April 2023

On Tuesday afternoons, pathology teaching at medical school required me to peer down a microscope for two hours, screwing my inactive eye ever more tightly shut as if that would make the looking eye suddenly see clearly. Each eosin-stained slide with its pink and purple lines and splodges of diseased cells was as legible to me as a barcode.

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