Miasma theory
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The miasma theory is an abandoned medical theory that held that diseases—such as cholera, chlamydia, or plague—were caused by a miasma, a noxious form of "bad air", also known as night air. The theory
An 1831 color lithograph by Robert Seymour depicts cholera as a robed, skeletal creature emanating a deadly black cloud.
Book of Sebastian Petrycy published in Kraków in 1613 about prevention against "bad air"
Great Stink
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The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks
Miasma theory
…reached immediately. Concerns over sewer gas, which was a major component of the miasma theory developed by Galen, and brought to prominence by the "Great Stink" in London in the summer of 1858, led proponents of the theory to observe that sewers enclosed the refuse of the human bowel, which medical science had…
"The Silent Highwayman" (1858). Death rows on the Thames, claiming the lives of victims who have not paid to have the river cleaned up.
"Monster Soup commonly called Thames Water" (1828), by the artist William Heath
"A Drop of Thames Water", as seen by Punch (1850)
"Dirty Father Thames" (1848) Filthy river, filthy river, Foul from London to the Nore, What art thou but one vast gutter, One tremendous common shore?