strangernstranger - just let me in again with no problem. Well, the text is this for anyone not able to see it:


From: KL47 Jun-3 4:40 pm
To: THEMANIAC777 unread (109 of 250)

2910.109 in reply to 2910.107

While the Romans had no way of seeing individual micro-organisms, at least some of them deduced that such creatures existed. In the mid-1st century BC, M. Terentius Varro wrote a book about farming called Rerum Rusticarum de Agri Cultura. In Book 1, chapter 12, he writes of swamps (loca palustria) "quod crescunt animalia quaedam minuta, quae non possunt oculi consequi, et per aera intus in corpus per os ac nares perveniunt atque efficiunt difficilis morbos." ("where tiny animals grow that are unable to be perceived by eye, and that get into the body, along with air, through the mouth and nose and cause serious illness" [my translation].)
The concept of airborne pathogens was thus already established when Varro wrote his book, though - ironically - I suspect that, given the context, the specific pathogens he had in mind were those responsible for malaria, which do not spread through the air but are rather transmitted primarily by mosquito bites. Whether Varro's concept of germs had any influence on other aspects of Roman medical practice is difficult to say.