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]
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  • Pathogenesis: How Germs Made History

    Jonathan Kennedy

    Torva, pp. 384, £25

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