Medical science has come a long way since the mid-1800s, when miasma was still thought to be a leading cause of disease. Author Darby Wood Walters describes the theory this way: disease emanates from filth, rising into the air and riding on the wind to infect its victims. Literally, miasma is bad air. Bad smells, like feces, were disease; and epidemics were blamed on “atmospheric influences.” For example, cholera was a terrifying disease that killed via dehydration. But not everyone breathing the same air was infected. So, miasma theory adds that one’s constitution comes into play. The weak, migrants, and people of low moral character were deemed more susceptible.
Wait, that doesn’t sound right. But miasma theory was science and improved on the notion that illnesses were caused by evil spirits. It contributed to public health by pressing cities to clean up their filthy streets.
But by the 1850s, English physician John Snow grew skeptical. Deadly cholera outbreaks erupted even where streets were clean. Dr. Snow suspected that cholera was water-borne. Inventing the science of epidemiology, he used a microscope, statistics, and disease-mapping to trace the epidemic to a London well that was contaminated by sewage. Over the objections of other doctors, he convinced the authorities to shut it down, and with it the cholera epidemic. It was the water, not the air. Diseases don’t float along in invisible clouds, and people of low moral character aren’t more susceptible.
At the same time, a small group of physicians in Pennsylvania was fighting the same battle against the American medical establishment. Once the cholera bacterium was discovered, the debate was over. But it took years for the germ theory of disease to replace miasma theory—proving that it’s hard to give up our entrenched ideas, even when they’re dumb.
I’m Jeff Gentry
Best reference:
Walters, D. W. (2019). “A Phantom on the Slum’s Foul Air”: Jack the Ripper and Miasma Theory. Victorian Periodicals Review, 52(3), 588–603. https://doi.org/10.1353/vpr.2019.0036
Dumb Ideas that Changed the World copyright 2024 by Jeff Gentry. All rights reserved.
