“No, it wasn’t possible that the century that utilized electricity so easily as a means of transport, which challenged distance by the manipulation of steam, perfected destruction by inventing terrible weapons, and reckoned with air and water by the simple use of gasoline-powered propellers, could be incapable of responding to an invasion of animals emerged from a test-tube in a laboratory. Oh, how illogical I was being, given my science!

“‘In any case,’ Monsieur Vernet went on, ‘are the macrobes as much to be feared as interested journalism proclaims? How do you expect these animals, emerged from a culture broth, as vastly developed as one can imagine, to nourish themselves on human flesh?’”

Andre Couvreur, 1909