Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic

by David Quammen

Another element of the dangerous brew in and around Mbomo was a mystic secret society, La Rose Croix, more familiar (if barely) to you and me as Rosicrucianism. It’s an international organization that has existed for centuries, mostly devoted to esoteric study, but in this part of the Congo it had a bad reputation, akin to sorcery. Four teachers within one nearby village were members, or were thought to be members—and these teachers had been telling children about Ebola virus before the outbreak occurred. That led some traditional healers to suspect that the teachers had advance knowledge—supernatural knowledge—of the outbreak. Something had to be done, yes? On the day before Barry Hewlett and his wife arrived in Mbomo, the four teachers were murdered with machetes while they worked in their crop fields.