19th Printing
So much disease, and not a single complaint yet about the food supply. We're sharing the hunt with parasites that should be easily removed with a simple application of insect repellent and the embrace of careful personal hygiene. This is how the plague spread, you'll remember, the masses unwittingly feeding the smallest creatures brought in from the fields, forests and kennels, on the washing and the clothing left to gather filth.
In the centuries before mine, people blamed sin and dark magic. Sickness came into cities on the backs of rats, and the ignorant burned cats to slow the spread of evil. You could argue that it helped, in small measure. Every dead cat was one less food source for the fleas. A ratting terrier could take its place without carrying the same perceived taint of the Fallen.
I remember the plagues better than I care to. Outbreaks endangered creatures of all kinds, not simply the ones that could be infected. Hunting could be scarce, and the frightened are often suspicious. Innocents died for no better reason than the selfishness of survival. Desperation creates killers as surely as does wickedness. In times when women died because doctors refused to continue examinations below the collars of their dresses and everyone died because of close quarters and inadequate care based more on folk remedies than research, there was ample incentive to be terrified.
Science may be blind to what even the uneducated once knew as fact, but at least it can spare the world from being crippled by vermin no larger than oat seeds.
In the centuries before mine, people blamed sin and dark magic. Sickness came into cities on the backs of rats, and the ignorant burned cats to slow the spread of evil. You could argue that it helped, in small measure. Every dead cat was one less food source for the fleas. A ratting terrier could take its place without carrying the same perceived taint of the Fallen.
I remember the plagues better than I care to. Outbreaks endangered creatures of all kinds, not simply the ones that could be infected. Hunting could be scarce, and the frightened are often suspicious. Innocents died for no better reason than the selfishness of survival. Desperation creates killers as surely as does wickedness. In times when women died because doctors refused to continue examinations below the collars of their dresses and everyone died because of close quarters and inadequate care based more on folk remedies than research, there was ample incentive to be terrified.
Science may be blind to what even the uneducated once knew as fact, but at least it can spare the world from being crippled by vermin no larger than oat seeds.