Miasma

Edwin Chadwick’s 1842 report argued for better sanitation while explaining disease through miasma, or poisonous air. Removing waste and improving water supplies could reduce disease even though his explanation of its cause was mistaken. Progress in practice did not always wait for progress in theory.

People believed that miasma, or bad air, caused disease, and that illness could be a punishment from God. Religious and natural explanations were therefore not necessarily treated as alternatives.

Another explanation was miasma, meaning bad or foul-smelling air. People noticed that dirty places, waste and illness were often associated with unpleasant smells. Without knowledge of germs, they mistook the smell itself for the cause of disease.