Michelle McPhee

case I found where someone talks about getting hit in the groin with a stone and he gets the clap.

So I think the modern mind is like, wait, well, what did he really have?

And I don't know.

I just don't know.

Maybe, who knows?

We'll never know.

But it gets very complicated when you, especially when I was looking at court records, where all of a sudden the difference between getting this disease from a stone versus someone sexually assaulting you is huge.

Huge, right?

That's a felony versus a misdemeanor versus nothing.

So it becomes really important in certain contexts to kind of parse these types of diseases.

I use that word often.

to kind of capture the way we think of disease.

And I think it's something that we take for granted that a disease is a biological entity that affects all of us more or less the same way.

So if you and I both are given the same diagnosis, we'll probably manifest the same set of symptoms.

If you and I have the same set of symptoms, we'll probably be diagnosed with the same disease.

This idea that diseases are fixed

that they are all affecting all bodies more or less similarly, and that they are treated and progressed more or less similarly.

This is a modern concept that's born in the 19th century.

So this book that I wrote is before any of that.

It's way before germs, the discovery of germs and germ theory.