Varro's Invisible Germs Swamp Warning

Over 2000 years ago, Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro warned that "there are bred certain minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, but which float in the air and enter the body through the mouth and nose and cause serious diseases." Writing in his work on agriculture, he used this idea to caution against building near swamps and unhealthy marshland. Varro imagined invisible, airborne agents of illness and the basic concept behind germ theory long before microscopes or laboratory science existed.

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