The Germ Theory — Daniel Defoe, Journal of the Plague Year

1903

Defoe Gave a Hint of It In the Early Eighteenth Century

Defoe's "Journal of the Plague Year," published in 1722, contains two passages which grope toward bacteriology. Defoe himself pretends to disbelieve the theories. But his way is to seem to doubt what he is really eager to advance.

Having shown that contagion was almost certain in the case of people living in the same house, but often avoidable by segregation and precaution against physical contact, Defoe says:

"This put it out of question to me that the calamity was spread by infection — that is to say, by some certain steams or fumes, which the physicians call effluvia, which effluvia affected the sound who came within certain distances of the sick. Others talk of infection being carried on by the air only by carrying with it vast numbers of insects and invisible creatures, who enter into the body with the breath or even at the pores with the air and there generate or emit most acute poisons or poisonous ova or eggs, which mingle themselves with the blood and so infect the body."

In another place is this passage:

"I have heard it was the opinion of others that it (the disease) might be distinguished by the party's breathing upon a piece of glass, where, the breath condensing, there might living creatures be soon by a microscope of strange, monstrous and frightful shapes, such as dragons, snakes, serpents and devils, horrible to behold. But this I very much question the truth of, and we had no microscopes at the time, as I remember, to make the experiments with."