Today it is said that illnesses are provoked by microbes, just as it was formerly said that they came from God, the devil, and so forth. In the thirteenth century it was said that illnesses came from God; in the fifteenth it was said that they came from the devil; later it was said that illnesses came from the humours, today we say that illnesses come from microbes! Such are the views that in the course of time give place to one another.
Source: Rudolf Steiner – GA 120 – Manifestations of Karma – Lecture 5: Natural and Accidental Illness in Relationship to Karma – Hamburg, 20th May 1910
Previously posted on March 19, 2015
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