Contagionism is an old idea, but gained new life in Restoration Britain. The Germ of an Idea considers British contagionism in its religious, social, political

Shows how the scientific knowledge about the role of microorganisms in disease made its way into American popular culture.

Highlights connections between authors rarely studied together by exposing their shared counternarratives to germ theory's implicit suggestion of protection in

1932 a lost chapter in the history of biology. Contents: Antoine Bechamp; the Mystery of Fermentation; a Babel of Theories; Pasteur's Memoirs of 1857; Bechamp's

A brilliant, sinuous exploration of family and childhood memory by one of the most original British philosophers of the twentieth century. Germs is about first