This passage has been excerpted from Dale H. Porter, The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London. Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 1998, which is reviewed eleswhere in the Victorian Web GPL.
Prevailing medical thcory linked disease to impurities in the air ("miasma"), usually thought to derive from decaying organic matter. Thus, Londoners were more apt to worry about the pollution of the atmosphere than the actual quality of the water. Since the air could also be corrupted by dirt, feces, and even perspiration, moralists pointed to squalid, undisciplined slum neighborhoods as the probable source of the diseased The miasma theory of disease led to a conviction among both experts and laymen that human and animal waste could be rendered innocuous by immersing it in water. The water closet, patented by Joseph Bramah in 1778, became popular among the upper middle classes in the 1820S and gradually spread throughout the metropolis in the following decades.* The WC was supposed to eliminate the need for carting human wastes. [55, 57,76]
Last modified 1999