“Invisible Little Worms” Athanasius Kircher’s Study of the Plague | The Public Domain Review
“Although the epidemic continued for more than a year, many of these tactics did help prevent the spread of the disease. The effects of the plague in Rome were much less devastating than in Naples — only about fifteen thousand people died. But living through it was frightening. One figure who did: the fairly eccentric, extremely prolific Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher.”
Poor Rats! How One Radical Woman Protested Paris’s War on Rats | Ladyscience.com
“In the autumn of 1920, as Parisians caught plague and went to war with rats and when public discussions turned to criminalizing, stigmatizing, and dehumanizing vulnerable groups in the city, Fanny Clar’s writings rang out in protest. While Paris writers were filling their pages with vitriol for rats, immigrants, people of color, criminals, and the poor, Clar punctured the hate by frankly rooting for the rats. “