The deadliest disease in the world, the most catastrophic warfare, the most cruel genocide, all pale in comparison to the sheer lethality and deleterious ramifications of a stubborn mind. The inability of men to be receptive of new solutions results in the exponential increase of the consequences of the existing problem. This is clearly evident in these three chapters of the book. Despite overwhelming and substantial scientific and statistical evidence that cholera is a waterborne, not airborne disease, authorities continued to merely ignore these findings by finding “loopholes.” The authority figures of the time, particularly Edwin Chadwick, were fervent supporters of the Miasmata theory. Chadwick argued that all smell was disease, as he believed the smell was directly related to “London’s rising tide of excretement.” While this might have been true, the smell produced by the excretement was not harmful. Our brains make the smell produced by excretement unpleasant so that we will not come into physical contact with the waste, which indeed contained germs and bacteria. The smell, therefore was an indicator that danger is nearby; it is by no means the danger itself. Furthermore, the idea of bad smell means disease was so engraved in the minds of the Victorian population for other reasons as well. Florence Nightingale, one of the most influential medical figures of the time, said that the “very first canon of nursing…is to keep the air he (the patient) breathes as pure as the external air, without chilling him.” She goes onto say that air containing foul smell can enter the patient’s ward, and this poisons the air the patient is breathing. While it is true that clean and fragrant air is indeed good for health, the opposite need not be true. Foul smelling air does not necessitate a decrease in health. Proponents of the Miasmata Theory were so parochial in their fervent conviction of the veracity of this theory that they refused to be the least bit receptive to Snow’s findings. This adamance by those who believed in the Miasmata Theory caused cholera deaths to continue for another decade, as Snow was left to find a foolproof method that would clearly indicate that water, not air, was the cause of cholera.