What long-held belief that takes its name from the Greek for 'pollution' purported that deadly diseases like cholera and plague were caused by a noxious form of 'bad air'?
"of food. The miasma theory was accepted from ancient times in Europe and China. The theory was eventually given up by scientists and physicians after 1880, replaced by the germ theory of disease: specific germs, not miasma, caused specific diseases. However, cultural beliefs about getting rid of odor made the clean-up of waste a high priority for cities. The word ""miasma ""comes from ancient Greek and means ""pollution"". The idea also gave rise to the name malaria (literally ""bad air"") through medieval Italian. Miasma was considered to be a poisonous vapor or mist filled with particles from decomposed matter (miasmata)"
"common idea that disease was caused largely by miasmas, or literally ""polluted air."" (Malaria, a disease spread by mosquitoes that breed in marshy areas, got its name from the Italian words for ""bad air"" because people initially blamed it on marsh gas.) Originally, traps in plumbing drain pipes were designed to help keep this bad air from passing back into living spaces within buildings. However, during the Broad Street cholera outbreak in London, in the Summer of 1854, physician John Snow, among others, worked to prove that polluted water was the culprit, not the foul smells from sewage pipes. Subsequently,"
"respiratory problems and is identified with pneumonic plague. Medical knowledge had stagnated during the Middle Ages. The most authoritative account at the time came from the medical faculty in Paris in a report to the king of France that blamed the heavens, in the form of a conjunction of three planets in 1345 that caused a ""great pestilence in the air"". This report became the first and most widely circulated of a series of plague tracts that sought to give advice to sufferers. That the plague was caused by bad air became the most widely accepted theory. Today, this is"
"bites, is unknown. The presence of malaria in Egypt from circa 800 BCE onwards has been confirmed using DNA-based methods. Malaria became widely recognized in ancient Greece by the 4th century BCE, and is implicated in the decline of many city-state populations. The term ""μίασμα"" (Greek for miasma): ""stain, pollution"", was coined by Hippocrates of Kos who used it to describe dangerous fumes from the ground that are transported by winds and can cause serious illnesses. Hippocrates (460–370 BCE), the ""father of medicine"", related the presence of intermittent fevers with climatic and environmental conditions and classified the fever according to"
"originated. They called it malaria (literally meaning ""bad air"") as they believed that the disease was a kind of miasma that was spread in the air, as originally conceived by Ancient Greeks. Then it was a medical consensus that malaria was spread due to miasma, the bad air. The first record of argument against the miasmatic nature of malaria was from an American physician John Crawford. Gorgas wrote an article ""Mosquital Origin of Malarial Disease"" in ""Baltimore Observer"" in 1807, but it provoked no consequences. An American physician Charles Earl Johnson provided a systematic and elaborate arguments against miasmatic origin"
"dating back to medieval times. Evelyn refers to Greek philosophers, who once believed that air was the principle of the earth and primary substance of the soul up until the time that air pollution began to cause ill health. Evelyn was appointed to the newly formed Royal Society, and both Society and pamphlet are celebrated in the 1663 """". Stanza 23 (given here in modern English) describes how Evelyn [...] shows that 'tis the sea-coal smoke<br> That always London does environ, <br> Which does our lungs and spirits choke, <br> Our hanging spoil, and rust our iron. <br> Let none"
"have been caused by both divine and natural origins. The plague was thought to have been a punishment from God for sinning, however because it was believed that God was the reason for all natural phenomena, the physical cause of the plague could be scientifically explained as well. One of the more widely accepted scientific explanations of the plague was the corruption of air in which pollutants such as rotting matter or anything that gave the air an unpleasant scent caused the spread of the plague. Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) played an important role in how illness was interpreted through"
"1857 the government poured chalk lime, chloride of lime and carbolic acid into the waterway to ease the stench. The prevailing thought in Victorian healthcare concerning the transmission of contagious diseases was the miasma theory, which held that most communicable diseases were caused by the inhalation of contaminated air. This contamination could take the form of the odour of rotting corpses or sewage, but also rotting vegetation, or the exhaled breath of someone already diseased. Miasma was believed by most to be the vector of transmission of cholera, which was on the rise in 19th-century Europe. The disease was deeply"
"by John Snow that cholera was spread through water. This slowed the response to the major outbreaks in the Soho district of London and other areas. The Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) was a proponent of the theory and worked to make hospitals sanitary and fresh-smelling. It was stated in 'Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes' (1860) that Nightingale would ""keep the air [the patient] breathes as pure as the external air. Fear of miasma registered in many early nineteenth century warnings concerning what was termed “unhealthy fog”. The presence of fog strongly indicated the presence of miasma."
"for the plagues to be a real test of faith, they had to contain an element leading to religious doubt. In his book ""The Plagues of Egypt: Archaeology, History, and Science Look at the Bible"", Siro Igino Trevisanato explores the theory that the plagues were initially caused by the Santorini eruption in Greece. His hypothesis considers a two-stage eruption over a time of a bit less than two years. His studies place the first eruption in 1602 BC, when volcanic ash taints the Nile, causing the first plague and forming a catalyst for many of the subsequent plagues. In 1600"
"the ‘bad spirits’ and was used in epilepsy, headaches and head injuries. They used a famous ‘poultice of figs’ to cure boils and the local healers had a concept of cleaning, washing and disinfecting the water. Common diseases in Cyprus were those in every Mediterranean country, namely food poisoning, sun stroke, tuberculosis and polio. Drought affected the water supplies making the water poisonous. Other common diseases were leprosy, skin infections, boils, eye infections (due to dust and flies), fractures and injuries. Epidemics such as bubonic plague were common. Many believed that healing was possible by believing in God, and the"
"such as contaminated water, foul air, and poor hygienic conditions. Such infections, according to the theory, were not passed between individuals but would affect those within a locale that gave rise to such vapors. In Antiquity, the Greek historian Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 400 BC) was the first person to state, in his account of the plague of Athens, that diseases could spread from an infected person to others. One theory of the spread of contagious diseases that were not spread by direct contact was that they were spread by ""seeds"" (Latin: ""semina"") that were present in the air."
"and Bolle believes that his name was the basis of the name of this saint and of his patronage of plague-sufferers via a process of aphaeresis of the Old French word for a storm, ""tempeste"", to -""peste"" ""plague"". This also accords with the equilibrium of humours theory of medieval medicine of Western Europe that held that illness could be caused by corruption of the air. Gian Paolo Vico, of the Associazione San Rocco Italia, states that a prisoner of French origin who had been held there for five years died in Voghera, Italy during the night of 15–16 August between"
"regular epidemics of cholera, smallpox, measles and typhoid. Public health policy at this time was generally shaped by the miasma theory (the belief that airborne particles were the primary factor in the spread of contagious disease), and the bad smells and risks of disease caused by piled bodies and exhumed rotting corpses caused great public concern. A Royal Commission established in 1842 to investigate the problem concluded that London's burial grounds had become so overcrowded that it was impossible to dig a new grave without cutting through an existing one. In 1848–49 a cholera epidemic killed 14,601 people in London"
"however, European discovery of the germ theory of disease proved decisive for the medical community, although popular belief never shook the old ""bad air"" theory. Medical attention shifted from curing the sick patient to stopping the spread of the disease in the first place. It indicated a system of quarantines, hospitalization, clean water, and proper sewage disposal. Dr Charles V. Chapin (1856-1941), head of public health in Providence Rhode Island, was a tireless campaigner for the germ theory of disease, which he repeatedly validated with his laboratory studies. Chapin emphatically told popular audiences germs were the true culprit, not filth;"
"most likely cause. In 2006, a study detected DNA sequences similar to those of the bacterium responsible for typhoid fever in dental pulp extracted from a burial pit dated to the time of the outbreak. The cause of the plague has long been disputed and other scientists have disputed the findings, citing serious methodologic flaws in the dental pulp-derived DNA study. The disease is most commonly transmitted through poor hygiene habits and public sanitation conditions; during the period in question related to Athens above, the whole population of Attica was besieged within the Long Walls and lived in tents. A"
"and enter the body through the mouth and nose and there cause serious diseases."" The Greek physician Galen (AD 129 – ca. 200/ca. 216) speculated in his ""On Initial Causes"" (ca. AD 175) that some patients might have ""seeds of fever"". In his ""On the Different Types of Fever"" (ca. AD 175), Galen speculated that plagues were spread by ""certain seeds of plague"", which were present in the air. And in his ""Epidemics"" (ca. AD 176–178), Galen explained that patients might relapse during recovery from a fever because some ""seed of the disease"" lurked in their bodies, which would cause"
"public health) and spread of panic dates back many centuries and continues into the 21st century with diseases such as AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, Zika, and SARS. Cohen's idea of the ""folk devil"" and epidemics can be compared because of their role in spreading mass panic and fear. The intense concentration on hygiene emerged, before the 20th century, with a medical belief referred to as miasma theory, which states that disease was the direct result of the polluting emanations of filth: sewer gas, garbage fumes, and stenches that polluted air and water, which results in an epidemic. The Great Stink of"
"M.D. Brazier has shown that early micro-fossils came from a hot world of gases such as methane, ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, which are toxic to much current life. Another analysis of the conventional threefold tree of life shows thermophilic and hyperthermophilic bacteria and archaea are closest to the root, suggesting that life may have evolved in a hot environment. Belief in spontaneous generation of certain forms of life from non-living matter goes back to Aristotle and ancient Greek philosophy and continued to have support in Western scholarship until the 19th century. This belief was paired with a belief"
"Its name derives from the Greek roots ὀξύς ""oxys"", ""acid"", literally ""sharp"", referring to the sour taste of acids and -γενής ""-genes"", ""producer"", literally ""begetter"", because at the time of naming, it was mistakenly thought that all acids required oxygen in their composition. One of the first known experiments on the relationship between combustion and air was conducted by the 2nd century BCE Greek writer on mechanics, Philo of Byzantium. In his work ""Pneumatica"", Philo observed that inverting a vessel over a burning candle and surrounding the vessel's neck with water resulted in some water rising into the neck. Philo"
"the total deaths. In Sub-Saharan Africa, over 75% of cases were due to ""P. falciparum"", whereas in most other malarial countries, other, less virulent plasmodial species predominate. Falciparum malaria was familiar to the ancient Greeks, who gave the general name ""pyretós"" ""fever"". Hippocrates (c. 460-370 BCE) gave several descriptions on tertian fever and quartan fever. It was prevalent throughout the ancient Egyptian and Roman civilizations. It was the Romans who named the disease ""malaria""—""mala"" for bad, and ""aria"" for air, as they believed that the disease was spread by contaminated air, or miasma. A German physician, Johann Friedrich Meckel, must"
"and a layer of clear yellow serum (""yellow bile""). Excesses of black bile and yellow bile were thought to produce depression and aggression, respectively, and the Greek names for them gave rise to the English words cholera (from Greek ""kholé"") and melancholia. In the former of those senses, the same theories explain the derivation of the English word bilious from ""bile"", the meaning of gall in English as ""exasperation"" or ""impudence"", and the Latin word ""cholera"", derived from the Greek ""kholé"", which was passed along into some Romance languages as words connoting anger, such as ""colère"" (French) and ""cólera"" (Spanish)."
"effectively block airborne contagion, while an ""impure"" atmosphere was ineffective for that; or on the other hand ""impure"" atmosphere, as well as crowding and filth, might mean a disease could ""acquire"" the property of contagion. A ""malignant microenvironment"" could be to blame, a hypothesis that had a consensus behind it in the aetiology of the middle of the 19th century. Inadequate ventilation was one factor to which the consensus pointed. Zymotic theory was an explanation of disease developed by Justus von Liebig and William Farr in the 1840s. A form of contingent contagionism, it began with a hypothesis on decomposition"
"developed treatments that were found to be effective. Whilst John Snow's edpidemiology maps were well recognised, and led to the removal of the Broad Street pump handle, e.g. 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. In 1874, scientific representatives from 21 countries voted unanimously to resolve that cholera was caused by environmental toxins from ""miasmatas"", or clouds of unhealthy substances which float in the air. In 1884, Robert Koch re-discovered ""Vibrio cholerae"" as a causal element in cholera. Some scientists opposed the new theory, and even drank cholera cultures to disprove it: Von Pettenkofer considered his experience proof that ""Vibrio cholerae"" was"
"of Athens. Alexicacus Alexicacus (Ancient Greek: ), the ""averter of evil"", was an epithet given by the Ancient Greeks to several deities, such as Zeus, and Apollo, who was worshiped under this name by the Athenians, because he was believed to have stopped the plague which raged at Athens in the time of the Peloponnesian War. It was also applied to Heracles. There is a statue of Apollo in the Museo delle Terme in Rome, a Roman copy of a Greek original, that is thought to be a copy of the statue of Apollo Alexicacus by Calamis that stood in"
"not 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, led to continuing proponents of the theory who observed that sewers enclosed the refuse of the human bowel, which medical science had discovered could teem with typhoid, cholera, and other microbes. The work of John Snow is notable for helping to make the connection between cholera and typhoid epidemics and contaminated water sources, which contributed to the eventual demise of miasma theory. During the cholera epidemic of 1854, Snow traced high mortality rates"
"of the General Register's Office, believed that miasma arose from the soil surrounding the River Thames. It contained decaying organic matter which contained miasmatic particles and was released into the London air. Miasma theorists believed in ""cleansing and scouring, rather than through the purer scientific approach of microbiology"". Farr later agreed with Snow's germ theory following Snow's publications. In contrast, the germ theory held that the principal cause of cholera was a germ cell that had not yet been identified. Snow theorized that this unknown germ was transmitted from person to person by individuals ingesting water. John Simon, a pathologist"
"Pneumonic plague Pneumonic plague is a severe lung infection caused by the bacterium ""Yersinia pestis"". Symptoms include fever, headache, shortness of breath, chest pain, and cough. They typically start about three to seven days after exposure. It is one of three forms of plague, the other two being septicemic plague and bubonic plague. The pneumonic form may occur following an initial bubonic or septicemic plague infection. It may also result from breathing in airborne droplets from another person or cat infected with pneumonic plague. The difference between the forms of plague is the location of infection; in pneumonic plague the"
"not until 1876 that Robert Koch proved that the bacterium ""Bacillus anthracis"" caused anthrax, which brought a definitive end to Miasma Theory. In 1846, the Nuisances Removal and Diseases Prevention Act was passed to identify whether the transmission of Cholera is by air or by water. The bill was used to encourage the owner to clean their dwelling and connect them to sewers. Some years later in 1855, John Snow made a testimony against the Amendment to this bill that regularized air pollution of some industries. He claimed that: At the same year, William Farr, who was then the major"
"as clothes, linen, etc., which although not themselves corrupt, can nevertheless foster the essential seeds of the contagion and thus cause infection."". His theory remained influential for nearly three centuries, before being superseded by a fully developed germ theory. The name for syphilis is derived from Fracastoro's 1530 epic poem in three books, ""Syphilis sive morbus gallicus"" (""Syphilis or The French Disease""), about a shepherd boy named Syphilus who insulted the Greek god Apollo and was punished by that god with a horrible disease. The poem suggests using mercury and ""guaiaco"" as a cure. His 1546 book (""De contagione"", ""On"
"justifying Haussmann's later renovation of the French capital. The disease was said to be preventable by cleansing and scouring of the body and items. Dr. William Farr, the assistant commissioner for the 1851 London census, was an important supporter of the miasma theory. He believed that cholera was transmitted by air, and that there was a deadly concentration of ""miasmata"" near the River Thames' banks. Such a belief was in part accepted because of the general lack of air quality in urbanized areas. The wide acceptance of miasma theory during the cholera outbreaks overshadowed the partially correct theory brought forth"
"Pneuma Pneuma () is an ancient Greek word for ""breath"", and in a religious context for ""spirit"" or ""soul"". It has various technical meanings for medical writers and philosophers of classical antiquity, particularly in regard to physiology, and is also used in Greek translations of ""ruach"" רוח in the Hebrew Bible, and in the Greek New Testament. In classical philosophy, it is distinguishable from ""psyche"" (), which originally meant ""breath of life"", but is regularly translated as ""spirit"" or most often ""soul"". ""Pneuma"", ""air in motion, breath, wind,"" is equivalent in the material monism of Anaximenes to ""aer"" (ἀήρ, ""air"")"
"between space and health dates back to Hippocrates, who stated that ""airs, waters, places"" all played significant roles impacting human health and history. A classic piece of research in health geography was done in 1854 as a cholera outbreak gripped a neighborhood in London. Death tolls rang around the clock and the people feared that they were being infected by vapors coming from the ground. John Snow predicted that if he could locate the source of the disease, it could be contained. He drew maps demonstrating the homes of people who had died of cholera and the locations of water"