Smallpox, measles, polio, AIDS, COVID-19... These names have left or are making a deep mark on human history – not because of anything else, but because they have claimed the lives of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people, and were once frightening. With the development of human medicine, some of them have gradually withdrawn from the stage of history, and some are being conquered, what stories are behind this?
It is now known that the culprits of these diseases are invisible little things, viruses, which represent the most primitive forms of life, and that it has been less than 100 years since humanity really "recognized" (the invention of the electron microscope in 1932 led to this crucial step), and it has only then been so true that Nobel laureate Joshua Ledberg could not help but exclaim: "The greatest threat to humanity's continued domination of the earth is the virus." ”
From the Hippocratic era to the beginning of the 19th century, it was generally believed that disease was mainly caused by two forms of toxins, namely "virus" and "miasma", at this time "virus" refers to visible toxins, such as snake venom, mad dog saliva, and plant toxic secretions, while "miasma" refers to invisible gases, from swamps, stagnant water, unburied human and animal corpses, causing infectious diseases and plagues. In contrast, the concept of "miasma" is closer to the modern concept of "virus".
Now we know that the culprits of infectious diseases are not only viruses, but also bacteria. Among them, the bacteria were "captured" by humans earlier because they were larger than viruses, and with the invention of the optical microscope, these relatively large guys began to enter people's field of vision. But the virus's "half-covered face" figure did not slowly reveal its appearance until the advent of the electron microscope in 1932.
But smart scientists have been studying viruses long before they can see them. Adolf Mayer (probably the first person to successfully transmit the viral disease) obtained the extract by mashing the leaves of infected tobacco and used these extracts to successfully cause infection of healthy tobacco crops. Scientists continued to shrink the pore size of the filters until they could contain all known bacteria, but the filtered liquid was still able to infect other plants, so the term "filtered virus" was coined to describe these microbes that are smaller than bacteria and cannot grow on bacterial media.
Even if human beings have done a full study of this "invisible" small thing, they are still stunned at the moment they see them, and the difference between the morphology of the "cell" that people have always known is too large, it contains only a small amount of genetic material and protein, lacks many of the characteristics needed for life, and can only be activated in the case of invading living cells.
Since they can only remain active by invading the host, how do they reproduce? How did it evolve with living things in this semi-finished posture, and even become the biggest threat to mankind? How, time and again, have human beings found the "silver bullet" from their terrible clutches to save themselves and left some of them "terrorists" in the relics of history forever?
All of these doubts can be answered in this book, The Invisible Enemy: The Natural History of Viruses, and as a popular science book of virology, I think it can meet all your requirements for understanding the discipline — both to be easy to understand, to be professional and accurate enough, and not to be boring and boring to make people sleepy to read, and to be close enough to life to be able to apply what you have learned.
Dorothy Crawford – author of this book – is a Fellow of the British Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a former Professor of Medical Microbiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Professor of Medical Microbiology and Dean of the School of Biological Medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In 2005, she was awarded the Order of the British Empire for her medical and higher education achievements.
The content of this book is also quite ingenious in organization, dividing the content that people are most concerned about into six chapters, in the first chapter "Viruses, Bacteria and Microorganisms" in detail the direct relationship and differences between viruses, bacteria and microorganisms, and in the second chapter" "New Viruses, or Old Enemies in New Clothing?" Introduced how the new virus appeared, in the third chapter "Cough and sneeze to spread diseases" let the reader fully understand the transmission of the virus, in the fourth chapter "Unlike love, herpes is eternal", but also let the reader realize that there are some viruses can not be completely eliminated, in the fifth chapter "Virus and Cancer" introduced the direct relationship between the two major killers currently facing mankind, and in the sixth chapter "Looking for a cure" also let the reader see the hope of this war - after all, smallpox has been ancient, AIDS is no longer an incurable disease.
Professor Dorothy Crawford explains in a timely and clear manner a field of science that is often misinterpreted by the ignorant through a reliable and understandable narrative, a fascinating way. Public confusion about science often leads to anti-science outcry, just as there are many anti-isolation farces abroad during the epidemic and their serious consequences, and the popularization of science is the anti-ignorance, and this "Invisible Enemy: The Natural History of Viruses" is obviously the most worthwhile popular science book in the direction of virology.