The insect facts of life -- The horrible history of human hygiene -- The land of silk and honey -- Bad-news bugs -- The earliest epidemics -- Close encounters of the ancient kind -- Medieval microbes -- More thinking but still stinking: the Renaissance -- Travel troubles -- It's all fun and games until someone loses an isle -- How revolutionary! -- Dastardly diseases and demented dictators -- The Nineteenth Century: crawling toward a cure -- The nitty gritty about the itty bitty: germs discovered at last -- Twentieth-century pox -- The craze about sprays -- Now what?