ABSTRACT
Words were found to describe what was essentially invisible and intangible but deadly, a ‘disease mist’ from the exhalations of two million open sewers, cesspools, graves and slaughter houses, which carried cholera, smallpox, typhus, measles and diphtheria on its wings, like some ghastly gigantic bird; ‘exhalation from marshes and the pollens and odiferous dust from flowers.’ The great scourges were watched approaching on this malevolent miasma with a helplessness that made for a high degree of insecurity. Tuberculosis, smallpox and typhus were always ‘in the air’, the first killed fifty-five thousand people a year, figures only vaguely accurate given the lack of post mortems amongst the poor. The Journal was restrained from expressing itself as forcefully on the subject of ‘quacks’ as Jerrolds Magazine, a more radical and acerbic publication.
