Sam Roberts

“Across the whole of the Americas, the introduction of infectious diseases from Europe resulted in a 90 percent fall in the population, from about 60.5 million in 1500 to 6 million a century later. The global population fell by 10 percent. The decline in slash-and-burn agriculture and the reforestation of tens of millions of hectares of cultivated land resulted in a reduction in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that is visible in the ice cores drilled by scientists in the Antarctic. The demographic collapse cooled the global surface air temperature by 0.15 degrees Celsius, contributing to the Little Ice Age in the early 1600s.[28]”
― Jonathan Kennedy, Pathogenesis: A History of the World in Eight Plagues

“Oh, I’m dying,’ I like moaned. ‘Oh, I have a ghastly pain in my side. Appendicitis, it is. Ooooooh.’ ‘Appendy shitehouse,’ grumbled this veck,”
― Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

“During his journeys, Livingstone survived twenty-seven bouts of malaria thanks to his discovery of the ameliorative properties of quinine.”
― Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives

“A complex and controversial figure, Lacan held therapy sessions for ten minutes or three hours, seduced patients, freely belched and farted, all while rubbing shoulders with the most prominent intellectuals of his day.”
― Alexa Hagerty, Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains