At Last! A Word That Works!

[peristaltor]

In his latest book, The Ecotechnic Future, John Michael Greer notes the problem of increasing yields in organic crops using the most obvious fertilizer source, one that literally falls out of farmers' asses:

So why has the world been unable to get its fertilizer together on this issue? What keeps composted humanure and urine from being a primary

Comments

[albionwood]

Biophobia seems a relatively recent development, coming not long after the widespread acceptance and understanding of germ theory etc. That's why I suggested it might be related. The absence of biophobia created conditions for recurring plagues of cholera, dysentery, and other fecal-oral-route diseases throughout the premodern period. Things actually got worse in the Early Modern period, when cities did indeed collect humanure and export it to nearby fields where it was used to grow crops. (Great little scene in Baroque Cycle about that, btw.)

But if there's evidence for biophobia before, say, 1854 (the Broad Street pump-handle episode), then my theory collapses.

(BTW, I challenge the assertion that the Miasma theory of disease was based on nothing more than disgust at smells. IIRC it was, like germ theory, an attempt to explain observations - in fact, many of the same observations that were also explained by germ theory: prevalence of diseases in filthy conditions, rapid spread of disease among filthy people, and the correlation of bad smell with many diseases. It was a scientifically-based theory, it just happened to be wrong.)

[peristaltor]

Allow me to challenge your challenge . . . with irony! Everything I know about the Miasma Theory came from Steven Johnson's The Ghost Map, the account of how John Snow and Henry Whitehead figured out that the Broad St. Pump was the probable source of the outbreak. I just went back to my post that quoted the book and read:

In lay terms, the human brain appears to have evolved an alert system whereby a certain class of extreme smells triggers an involuntary disgust response that effectively short-circuits one's ability to think clearly -- and produces a powerful desire to avoid objects associated with the smell. It's easy to imagine the evolutionary pressures that would bring this trait into being.

(Johnson, The Ghost Map, Riverhead, 2007, p. 129.)

So, yes, Miasma was used as "an attempt to explain observations" as you note. As Johnson notes, though, there was more to miasma's wide acceptance -- a cultural inertia:

Why was the miasma theory so persuasive? . . . This kind of question leads one to a kind of mirror-image version of intellectual history: not the history of breakthroughs and false leads, the history of being wrong.

(Johnson, ibid, p. 126.)

Johnson explores that history well. He notes that germ theory was adopted slowly; even after John Snow published his ghost map tracking the disease to the source, only 5% of people accepted germ theory as even possible. It's a great book.

[peristaltor]

I just re-read my comment, upon which you commented, and realized I should have changed "based on nothing more than disgust at smells" to "conflating an inate disgust at smells with increased incidence of disease where things smell" or some such clarifying verbiage.

My bad.

[albionwood]

That would have elicited a less assertive challenge from me! Basically we are now saying more or less the same thing: There was a scientific basis for miasma theory, but it was based on false assumptions, and eventually failed to withstand scrutiny as more information became available.

Cultural inertia always plays a role in these things; our own culture is just as susceptible as that of 19th century England. In a few decades, what will people look back at and say, "How could those people have been so foolish?"

ETA: We still need to discern when biophobia developed, before we can discard my theory that it is somehow related to the understanding of germ theory.

[peristaltor]

That would have elicited a less assertive challenge from me!

That's one of my (and I suspect, of others') issues with bloggy communication: one loses the trail of the conversation and thus the trail of response. Each new comment becomes a simplified version of the conversation, losing elements at each response. Ah, well. Nature of the beast.

That said, I re-read the thread. Since Lewis fought in the Great War, and since the Great War was fought almost two generations after Louis Pasteur's breakthroughs in germ theory, long enough for it to become more culturally accepted and for germ theory practices to develop, I think you are correct. My bad, yet again.

You may now do as I do on such occasions: wave your fist at the screen and shout "Suck it, loser!" ;-)