I'm always a huge fan of the miasma theory of disease. (See here: http://beboots.livejournal.com/69275.html ) I think it just makes so much sense! Especially since I myself have never seen a germ with my own eyes. Essentially, obnoxious smells cause disease. It makes intuitive sense: there's a giant dung heap, which stinks. Everyone living around the dung heap is getting sick. Clearly, the smell causes the sickness. This belief is really what first started spurring sanitarians in the 19th century to clean up cities. I mean, you don't want the residential areas being built right next to cemeteries where obnoxious fumes from putrefication can make everyone sick, right? Right. Of course, it was this exact same theory that encouraged the building of the sewer system in London in the mid-1800s, which on the face of it sounds great, but in reality what it meant was that all of the individual cesspools in which festered individual illnesses were now all dumped, raw, into the Thames, which was also the source of a huge amount of drinking water for the city... So after the sewer system came in illnesses became less localized and more widespread: everyone downriver would get it. But anyway...
Miasma was a part of Western medical thinking for centuries, possibly even almost a millenium. It shaped everything we used to know about disease. I just learned the other day about the origin of the word "malaria": although it's today believed to be spread by mosquitoes, the components of the word actually come from the Italian "mal aria", or "bad air".
...Then again, you can't really beat 19th century ideas about women and hysteria. Can't stop those uteri from wandering about our inner cavities... I read this fascinating book a while back on the subject. It was by Michelle Stacey, and it was entitled "The Fasting Girl." The summary/title on the title page went: "In 1865, MOLLIE FANCHER of Brooklyn, New York, began suffering unexplained symptoms, including blindness, paralysis, and trances. Thirteen years later, she became an international sensation: fought over by scientists and philosophers: called a "psychological miracle" and a fraud. Igniting her fame was one remarkable question: HOW HAD MOLLIE LIVED FOR SIX MONTHS ON A FEW TEASPOONS OF MILK AND A SMALL BANANA - AND FOR THE NEXT TWELVE YEARS, ON NOTHING AT ALL?" The history of hysteria is absolutely fascinating and absolutely CRAZY.
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Date: 2011-02-15 03:44 pm (UTC)I'm always a huge fan of the miasma theory of disease. (See here: http://beboots.livejournal.com/69275.html ) I think it just makes so much sense! Especially since I myself have never seen a germ with my own eyes. Essentially, obnoxious smells cause disease. It makes intuitive sense: there's a giant dung heap, which stinks. Everyone living around the dung heap is getting sick. Clearly, the smell causes the sickness. This belief is really what first started spurring sanitarians in the 19th century to clean up cities. I mean, you don't want the residential areas being built right next to cemeteries where obnoxious fumes from putrefication can make everyone sick, right? Right. Of course, it was this exact same theory that encouraged the building of the sewer system in London in the mid-1800s, which on the face of it sounds great, but in reality what it meant was that all of the individual cesspools in which festered individual illnesses were now all dumped, raw, into the Thames, which was also the source of a huge amount of drinking water for the city... So after the sewer system came in illnesses became less localized and more widespread: everyone downriver would get it. But anyway...
Miasma was a part of Western medical thinking for centuries, possibly even almost a millenium. It shaped everything we used to know about disease. I just learned the other day about the origin of the word "malaria": although it's today believed to be spread by mosquitoes, the components of the word actually come from the Italian "mal aria", or "bad air".
...Then again, you can't really beat 19th century ideas about women and hysteria. Can't stop those uteri from wandering about our inner cavities... I read this fascinating book a while back on the subject. It was by Michelle Stacey, and it was entitled "The Fasting Girl." The summary/title on the title page went: "In 1865, MOLLIE FANCHER of Brooklyn, New York, began suffering unexplained symptoms, including blindness, paralysis, and trances. Thirteen years later, she became an international sensation: fought over by scientists and philosophers: called a "psychological miracle" and a fraud. Igniting her fame was one remarkable question: HOW HAD MOLLIE LIVED FOR SIX MONTHS ON A FEW TEASPOONS OF MILK AND A SMALL BANANA - AND FOR THE NEXT TWELVE YEARS, ON NOTHING AT ALL?" The history of hysteria is absolutely fascinating and absolutely CRAZY.