Steampunk Journal - The best steampunk news, reviews, articles and guides
In a World Before Germs… During my visit to the London Museum of Water and Steam, I learned a lot about the misunderstandings that people during the steam era had when it came to disease transmission. It wasn’t until a study conducted by John Snow in 1854 that people understood that a bacterial infection could come from contaminated water. Instead, many people prescribed to the “miasma theory,” which hypothesized that pollution (ie bad smells) were the cause of infection. The map above is from the 1870s. It shows an effort to chart the potential for illness based on the bad smells in different neighborhoods. I borrowed it from an article on citylab.com, and you can read the full text here. But before […]
The post This New York City “Stench Map” was the Cutting Edge in Fighting Cholera in the Steam Era appeared first on Steampunk Journal.