Fascinating history. Someone will write an excellent book, eventually but goes back to germ theory vs. miasma wars overcorrection/dogma from what I can tell—plus there are blatant errors of physics in current official docs waiting for pandemic to settle, I guess, for correction.
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Other interesting questions about the 1800s: what was the arc of the acceptence of germ theory? How quickly did scientists come to accept it? How quickly did the general population come to accept it?
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I guess it's something that may be hard to tell from just the scientific record, might also need to look at health messaging in newspapers and from authorities. Hope a historian of public health sees this thread.
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It took. A. Long. Time. I mean, think about it? “The foul smelling, filthy air that’s making you feel like you’re choking isn’t making you sick, but this crystal clear glass of water from this pump at Broad Street is because it’s full of gremlins too small to see. Trust me!”
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John Snow's research of epidemics in London coincided with the miasma era. It rebuts miasma theory. OTOH, refuting miasma does not take your straight to germ theory. Were most of the good PH interventions in the 1800s just intuitive responses?
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I don’t think I’d say that. I’ve read a lot of primary documents about Yellow Fever—it’s an interest of mine—from that era and people were a lot more systematic in their thinking that we give them credit for, imo. That said, tools more limited.
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I run into references to Yellow Fever in my research of Victorian lodging houses in Houston. Hotels shut down for epidemics and replaced beddings before reopening. One of the founders of Houston died of it. An inventor in Galveston claimed that it was caused by mosquitos.
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Which inventor and what year?
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Gail Borden of condensed milk fame. I would have to dig up the mosquito reference. He was the surveyor of the original Houston town site, and conducted the second survey of Galveston. He also patented a meat biscuit and tried to sell it to the US Army.
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"One of the first involved his attempt to wipe out yellow fever in Galveston, Texas, where he lived in 1844. That year, his wife, age 32, and 4-year-old son contracted the disease, swiftly sickened and died."https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-man-who-invented-elsie-the-borden-cow-171931492/ …
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I’d love to see the reference to any mosquito suspicion he might’ve had! 
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I posted the link to an article from Smithsonian Magazine, which is where I read it.
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The best source on Borden is supposed to be Joe B Frantz, Gail Borden: Dairyman to the World (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1951). The book is non-circulating at my local library and I am too cheap to buy a copy.
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