The Apprenticeship of Lucas Whitaker (12 page)

Medical knowledge has advanced greatly since 1676, when Anton van Leeuwenhoek looked through the lens of the first microscope and viewed tiny “animalcules” in a drop of undistilled vinegar. Another two hundred years passed before the connection between germs and disease was proven. That connection was just beginning to be considered seriously in Lucas Whitaker's time.

Today, of course, we know that tuberculosis, or TB, is caused by several species of bacteria called the tubercle bacillus. We understand, as well, how TB is transmitted from one person to another. When a person who is sick with TB coughs or spits or sneezes, tiny droplets containing countless tubercle bacilli are sent out into the air, where they may float for hours. Anyone who inhales them risks becoming infected.

There is no vaccine against tuberculosis, but it can be treated effectively through improved nutrition and hygiene, combined with bed rest and the use of antibiotics and other drugs. However, TB is still found all over the world, and remains a serious health threat in densely populated areas with poor hygienic standards.

We can see the ways in which inadequate nourishment and the crowded, unsanitary conditions of most colonial farmhouses helped to spread the disease among people who had no knowledge of germs, or of the means of contagion or prevention. But if we place ourselves back in those dimly lit farmhouses, faced with the terrifying and mysterious spread of a life-threatening sickness, it is not hard to understand how people might superstitiously blame the dead for their troubles.

Imagine for a moment opening the coffin of a dead person and seeing eyes fixed and open, fingernails that appear to have grown, a mouth with blood draining from it. We now know that these “signs of life” that Lucas saw when he gazed at Thomas Stukeley's body are normal effects of the decomposition process. But in the absence of this knowledge, what might we have believed?

Indeed, superstitions often seem no more strange than the truth. After all, isn't it amazing that “tiny animals,” invisible to the eye, are the cause of sickness and death?