‘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!