by Elio — Sev­eral events in my life that I will re­count be­low have com­bined to make me feel con­nected to the rick­ettsiae. Con­se­quently, I was drawn to a re­cent book some­what bom­bas­ti­cally en­ti­tled "The Fan­tas­tic Lab­o­ra­tory of Dr. Weigl" by Arthur Allen.