‘Understanding the Bad air’
Since centuries, our ancestors
have been quite obsessed with the concept of diseases as a cause of curse or bad air! Many diseases like Malaria were name after ‘bad-air’, whereas initially ‘tuberculosis’ was considered as a noxious
jinx in Europe. Similarly, diseases like Cholera,
Typhoid and Syphilis were terrorists of their time but again it triggered
research and made scientists reach a point to find the spot-on cure.
A great reason for epidemics
was lack of hygiene. When the British realized this, they went for
visible cleaning but it brought no better. Then, it was concluded that it’s in
reality microscopic pathogens and the
concept immunization, vaccination and
disinfection got famous. When people started moving near cities due to
industrialization, slums started coming into being. Slums had people living in close contact, which caused contagious
infections to spread easily.
The miasma theory
of the bad air was a huge misconception
of the educated but still it had few verities in it. There were various maladies
that spread via air and could be contracted with areas of unscrupulous whiff,
especially associated to old sewer systems of feces collection. In a nutshell,
I now deem ancestral believes are based
over experiences that carry certainties but have to be scientifically judged
for a supposition!