“You’ll never hear the bullet that kills you.” True. And by the same token, you’ll never see the disease that ends your life. Tiny and pervasive, the viruses and bacteria and fungi that invisibly permeate the very air around you are potentially more deadly than bullets, more silent than poison, more lethal than gas.
Until ‘germs’ were identified in the 1800s, the cause of disease was mysterious. An imbalance of ‘humors’ of the body was put forth as one possibility; ‘miasma’ or ‘bad air’ was another. The latter actually came close to the truth, for airborne diseases at any rate. At first microscopes helped identify the culprits, and when those proved inadequate their more powerful cousins the electron microscopes were developed. As the ability to delve into the unseen world around us evolved, our ability to cope with its less desirable denizens evolved also.
Cancer, dementia, even aging itself– they continue to trouble mankind. With all of our knowledge, with all of our specialized equipment, we can’t pin down a cause, Not yet, anyway.
The good news? Equally invisible, equally potent, equally mysterious are the beneficial viruses, bacteria and fungi. In fact, the good guys are winning or you wouldn’t be reading this post.
So the question is– what are we still not seeing?