It applied to vermin like mice, too. From Wired[1]: > In the 17th century, physician and chemist Jean Baptiste van Helmont, apparently sick of there not being

It applied to vermin like mice, too. From Wired[1]: > In the 17th century, physician and chemist Jean Baptiste van Helmont, apparently sick of there not being enough mice in this world, devised a home recipe for their manufacture. It was quite simple, really, far simpler than getting a girl mouse and boy mouse together with a tiny bottle of wine: “If a soiled shirt is placed in the opening of a vessel containing grains of wheat,” he wrote, “the reaction of the leaven in the shirt with fumes from the wheat will, after approximately 21 days, transform the wheat into mice.” [1] https://www.wired.com/2014/06/fantastically-wrong-how-to-grow-a-mouse-out-of-wheat-and-sweaty-shirts/ https://www.wired.com/2014/06/fantastically-wrong-how-to-gro...