The part of the reading that I found most interesting was the one about the miasma theory. It still boggles my mind that they were actually convinced that all smell is disease and that it was the obvious explanation as to why so many individuals were contracting cholera. Sure, (as James explained last class and as Ghost Map later explains) smells are what protect us from coming into contact with whatever toxic substance the smell is coming from, so technically all smell is disease if that substance is not avoided. However, all of this should have been irrelevant to the Londoners during that time because cholera was a disease of the intestines. It was not affecting their respiratory system in any way, so how could it be airborne? With that being said, I ask these questions: Why was miasma the obvious explanation to them? What made it so appealing and what in turn made the water theory so unappealing?  I especially like how Johnson put it on page 126 when he asked, “Why did so many brilliant minds cling to it, despite the mounting evidence that suggested it was false?” He is absolutely right, many intelligent individuals in the fields of science and medicine believed in this theory, but why?

I can’t help but think of the saying “You can’t really understand another person’s experience until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” when thinking about the cholera epidemic in London. I guess we will never truly understand why people chose to cling to miasma, because we were not there to inhale the horrific smells and experience the nightmare that was cholera. The most we can do is try and as far as I’m concerned, if all I could smell was filth every second of every day, I may have thought that it was the cause of the disease as well. It is easy to often place the blame on things that are right in front of our eyes. It is also important to note that the cholera epidemic affected them physically as well as mentally. In other words, they probably were not thinking straight – that is, except for John Snow.