Invisibility naturally stimulates wonder and imagination. Those forces that we know or suspect exist take on magical powers and super-earthly characteristics as they enter and exit our physical world, sometimes leaving clear signs of their presence, other times leaving none excepting those that we conjure up in our own minds and imagination. Fairies and ghosts race through culture and literature as plagues and pestilence become invisible curses destined to ruin our world. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio’s famous curse “A plague o’ both your houses!” links a family feud to an invisible killer. And it is the plagues and contagions that have haunted mankind for hundreds of years, lurking in the shadows, invisible and misunderstood.
Roman writer Lucretius saw the universe “as made of vast swarms of atoms” which produced “life, death and all variety of nature” also asserting that “disturbances among the stars released seeds that descended to the earth, some infecting animals, some plants.”[1] As mankind strived to make sense of the invisible invaders, 17th century advances in microscope technology allowed scientist Antonie van Leeuwenhoek to see tiny life-forms swimming in water samples and furthering the theory that “living seeds were the cause of contagious diseases.”[2]
While science came closer to discovering the answers, still the mystery remained as the tiny invaders made their way into society changing and adapting as time went on, retaining some elements of invisibility and all the mystery of their existence.
Today with Covid 19 fresh in our memories and nightmares, the invisible invaders still hold so many mysteries; invisible mysteries that send fear through our hearts and make us realize that powerful forces often lurk unseen.
