Max von Pettenkofer […] upheld a version of the miasmatic theory and denied the bacillus was the vera causa of cholera.

So Aunt Bell sat down to table—a bony frame, with an anxious green eye, a pursy mouth, and a sweating sickness of bitter words, seeking to break forth at the earliest opportunity.

Until that moment, it had not really occurred to me — or my mothers, even though one is an ObGyn — that I might have half siblings out there.

Folly, like Wisdom, speaks in proverbs, but her proverbs are antiwisdom: Stolen water is sweet.