This book was disappointing.

I wanted to know more about Toxoplasmosis. Torrey wrote a great book about the rising prevalence of insanity over the last few hundred years (The Invisible Plague), and hinted in that book that infections, notably toxoplasmosis, might be a culprit. He’s also written several papers on the subject. But this book was much more general, describing many diseases caused by animals.

The book seemed to lack a point. It describes our changing relationship with animals through history, and points to the obvious benefits (food, pest control, etc.), with the also obvious downside (animals can bring diseases to humanity). The book doesn’t really have a conclusion besides this, or any real guidance about what to do for these problems.

The book was heavily germ theory oriented. Much of my audience, and myself, lean towards terrain theory, and many of the examples of animals causing disease are what we would call nonsense germ theory propaganda. The authors take every claim of animal transmission at face value, which basically discredits the whole book to me.

I don’t even know the terrain perspective on toxoplasmosis, but even if written in purely germ theory language I wouldn’t have been so disappointed. And if they wrote specifically about infections causing mental illness I think I also would have been satisfied. Torrey’s specialty is mental illness and this book just felt like a textbook rehash because it’s not his specialty so he can’t really challenge it.

Weird book. Don’t recommend.