Typhoid Mary’s story is not only an argument in favor of good sanitation, something unknown in the Bible, the Qu’ran or any other holy book – it is also an answer to the question, What’s the harm in a little superstition?

Churches in Switzerland continued to persecute mainly women for the imagined crime of witchcraft.

It would seem to the less credulous that, if God were really opposed to the new calendar, He might have taken more direct action against it.

Anesthesia was denounced from pulpits across the land as impious and contrary to Holy Writ - until Queen Victoria needed to use it.