“Doctors generally consider smallpox to be the worst human disease. It is thought to have killed more people than any other infectious pathogen, including the Black Death of the Middle Ages. Epidemiologists think that smallpox killed roughly one billion people… — Richard Preston Copy Share Image
“Nine out of ten humans killed? And you're not bothered." A look of mysterious thoughtfulness crossed his face. "A virus can be useful to… — Richard Preston Copy Share
To mess around with Ebola is an easy way to die. Better to work with something safer, such as anthrax. — Richard Preston Copy Share
“He becomes dizzy and utterly weak, and his spine goes limp and nerveless and he loses all sense of balance. The room is turning… — Richard Preston Copy Share
“Ebola Zaire attacks every organ and tissue in the human body except skeletal muscle and bone. It is a perfect parasite because it transforms… — Richard Preston Copy Share
“Jahrling sat down at his desk and sighed. There was a landfill of papers on his desk, mostly about smallpox, and it was discouraging.… — Richard Preston Copy Share
“we could eradicate smallpox from nature, but we could not uproot the virus from the human heart” — Richard Preston Copy Share
“C.J. had spoken longingly of finding the African termite queen, the glistening white sac that was half a foot long and as thick as… — Richard Preston Copy Share
During climbs into taller trees, I was occasionally able to look down on the backs of birds, which shine with reflected sunlight as they… — Richard Preston Copy Share
The Ludolphian number is fixed in eternity— not a digit out of place, all characters in their proper order, an endless sentence written to… — Richard Preston Copy Share
“Your mouth bleeds, and you bleed around your teeth, and you may have hemorrhages from the salivary glands—literally every opening in the body bleeds,… — Richard Preston Copy Share
“One room in the hospital had not been cleaned up. No one, not even the nuns, had had the courage to enter the obstetric… — Richard Preston Copy Share
It showed a kind of obscenity you see only in nature, an obscenity so extreme that it dissolves imperceptibly into beauty. — Richard Preston Copy Share
