Miasma Theory, Explained

Miasma theory was the idea that poisonous, putrid, bad-smelling air spread epidemic diseases. While it was popularized by the Hippocratic School around 400 BCE, it continued to influence medicine until well into the 19th century (and arguably, still does today). In this video, Patrick Kelly will tell the story of miasma theory's origins and how it evolved over time into something called zymotic theory.
☠️NONE OF THE INFORMATION IN THIS VIDEO SHOULD BE USED AS MEDICAL ADVICE OR OPINION. IT IS FOR GENERAL EDUCATION AND ENTERTAINMENT☠️
🎥 VIDEOS MENTIONED 🎥
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🔗 L I N K S 🔗
📱Instagram: / patkellyteaches
🐦Twitter: / patkellyteaches
💰Patreon: / corporis
🔬My anatomy channel: / corporis
📚My favorite books docs.google.com/document/d/1w...
🔑 P A T R O N S 🔑
Michelle H
Rourou Y
Joanne K
Joe B
Kristoffer R
Brandon K
Brendan P
Karly N
Ron Blumenfeld
Dane M
📜 S O U R C E S 📜
Miracle Cure, the Creation of Antibiotics www.amazon.com/Miracle-Cure-C...
Passions and Tempers by Noga Arikha
www.amazon.com/Passions-Tempe...
Miasma
cssterner.nfshost.com/research...
www.infezmed.it/media/journal...
books.google.com/books/about/...
juniperpublishers.com/arr/pdf...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.ijournalhs.org/article.as...
Black Death
www.jstor.org/stable/44443424
Plague and Microscopes
www.bl.uk/collection-items/mi...
www.jstor.org/stable/301787
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
wellcomecollection.org/articl...
Fracastoro & Contagion
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
nyamcenterforhistory.org/2013...
www.infezmed.it/media/journal...
www.google.com/books/edition/...
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athan...
www.scientificamerican.com/ar...
💻 C O N T A C T 💻
If you’d like to sponsor a video or have other business inquiries:
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#historyofmedicine #medicalhistory

[@PatKellyTeaches]

If anyone wants some follow up reading, I've got a whole list of recommended books in a google doc here: docs.google.com/document/d/1wuG-8EiF2lMbFdEG-9k1qi1d1KZAdGK1o41o7SYed_k/edit?usp=sharing

[@skybluskyblueify]

Which book goes over the stories of how germ theory started including the "fights" between experts of the day? I don't want wait for the next episode so I want the books now. This is not like a class where you are not supposed to "read ahead", I hope. LOL

[@AnonymousanonymousA]

miasma = pathogens airborne, like with a cold or flu etc

[@AnonymousanonymousA]

smell? you went out of your way to gaslight?

[@AnonymousanonymousA]

did u not wear a mask during covid?

[@krustyknight2943]

I wonder if 100 years from now, if some of our scientific beliefs will be seen in the same light as the maisma theory

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I hope so! That's the exciting part about trying to answer these big unsolved questions in science!

[@Lynn-rv4ty]

idk if it will be that soon, the exponential expansion of our knowledge might surprise me, but it is likely to be at least double that

[@PneumaticFrog]

​@Lynn-rv4ty I mean considering we can see literally atoms now. I doubt germ theory will change all that much. How we treat and deal with disease. Sure, but no, germ theory wouldn't change all that much it's pretty set in stone

[@planeta3059]

the fact there's still not a 100% consensus on wether viruses are alive or not makes me think that we might not be so right about everything and there's still a lot to discover

[@PneumaticFrog]

@@planeta3059 it's not that they're alive or not they just fall under the same definitions as we would consider alive or dead....

[@TheRennat47]

Rooting for the KZbin algorithm to start promoting your channel; the effort you put into your videos deserves it.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate that. Gonna keep on going regardless of who's watching. I genuinely love learning about these stories!

[@yeetghostrat]

I think that might be today. He's getting recommended to me under every video I watch, today. I keep accidentally coming back to binge. I'm willing to bet I'm not the only one YT has bumped him to today

[@deathweaselx86]

Looks like the algo has delivered!

[@3_up_moon]

It did it! I'm here!

[@Practicalinvestments]

⁠@@PatKellyTeachessame here when I put ‘miasma theory’ in the search bar looking for an in depth look at the history and origins this is exactly what I was looking for! No scratch that it’s better then what I was looking for! I love history!

[@Practicalinvestments]

The dude really painted his wife then was like ‘hol up hol up! Stay right there! Lemme get the microscope baby!’ 😂

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Science in the streets, science in the sheets.

[@desmondpavitt9890]

He didn't sow the seeds of doubt. The doubt spontaneously generated.

[@theturkeychild]

I remember reading about Leeuwenhoek reporting on his discovery of sperm to the royal society in London and how he had to be even more circumspect than a youtuber about how he had come to be doing that

[@PatKellyTeaches]

"I have....methods.... I swear"

[@courage936]

I appreciate the effort made by all of these thinkers, I imagine it would be very difficult to understand disease without having the technology of the microscope.

[@JamesMadisonsSpiritAnimal]

The only reason i learned about miasma is because of watching Inuyasha as a kid, being curious they kept mentioning it then going to my schools library and actually learning about it. Kudos to old cartoone for tricking kids into researching lol

[@akihikosakurai4013]

Miasma theory wasn't too far off tbh. Where there's bad smells there's also lots of bacteria. They just didn't have the full picture

[@theoverseer393]

The body was evolutionarily blessed with negative smells that we could avoid

[@OKay-ox3kh]

I mean it isn’t too crazy. Coughing and human contact is the main spread of disease I’m sure the plague doctors were a lot safer with covered bodies and face especially with all those layers of different flowers and herbs.

[@paulas2218]

I’m a retired nurse with a huge love of learning, especially biology, pathophysiology, medicine, disease and history. I’ve just found your channel and I love it! I’m plowing through your videos! I’d love to hear more about medicine in the Americas, traveling nurses, Frontier medicine, the medical knowledge of Indigenous peopleI, and so on. I don’t remember what video it was that I learned you are a teacher, but since I never told my teachers this I will tell you-It was the great teachers I had that instilled in me my love of learning, especially my High School Biology teacher, that turned me to science and Nursing. Just know that because of a teacher, I went on to help heal the sick, bring babies into the world, and hold off death at least for a time. Thank you so much! You make a difference. ❤

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Hell. Yes. That's all so awesome to hear -- thanks for all the kind words. I've got plans for videos on indigenous knowledge (especially the transformation of willow bark into Aspirin), so that's coming sometime.... probably next year

[@ecofishes]

i’ve been binging a few of your videos and went to subscribe and saw you only had 50k and i was shocked. i thought you were at LEAST a 500k channel. absolutely criminal

[@Jamesssssssssssssss]

I can understand why they thought it spread via smells. Sometimes really bad smells can make my throat sore for a little.

[@AgentOffice]

Your brain tells you it's bad to keep you away

[@esotericpince]

2:33 this bit is so cool to me. it really shows the thought process of what eventually became modern epidemiology

[@JW-vi2nh]

I just saw a comment from 12 days ago saying that you only had 12k subs and now you have 45.1k. I found your channel maybe a little over a week ago and have been trying to remember to leave a comment on each one to help out. It seems that all of us doing that over the past week or so has really helped, almost quadrupling your subs in under 2 weeks. You absolutely deserve it. Your content is beyond amazing!

[@luckyluke013]

Love the journalistic-esque content lately! Super small comment-- at times I feel like cuts are done a hair too soon which causes words to bleed into each other. E.g. at 11:18 the "groceries" and "but" jarred me for half a second as they bled into each other. The pausing between chapters is done well, to help me digest what you said, but more "breaths" between cuts themselves feels like it'd be good too. Extra quarter second maybe?

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Yes, totally understand the desire for a split second more. I'm so used to hearing my pace that I forget what it sounds like from others' perspectives! Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it.

[@ellemarr7234]

Just found your channel and I can’t believe you haven’t gotten a million subs. Come on algorithm, do your thing! Seriously, this is becoming one of my favorite channels 😊

[@Marco_Onyxheart]

As a Dutchman, I'm just surprised that you didn't butcher the name Leeuwenhoek. It's not perfect Dutch pronunciation, but it's close, and a lot better than most English speakers do.

[@tylermiller4182]

Just a gentle observation that miasma absolutely showed up in dictionaries as early as the 6th c AD, where Hesychius glosses the word as akatharsia-uncleanliness, among other definitions. The verb from which it was derived is miaínō, to stain/defile and shows up in Homer. Miasma (and miaínō) in the classical era frequently expressed a moral concept showing up in the tragedians in the sense of moral pollution attached to crimes, such as those committed in Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Euripides’ Hippolytus, and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. It does, however, show up in the hippocratic corpus in, I think, On Breaths on the medical sense. I feel as though the moral sense of the word is important to understand its origin and the implications it had for the ancient and medieval world order and concept of disease, especially since moral stigmas have been attached to certain illnesses until fairly recently (maybe even to the present day).

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Super interesting, and a good reminder of the intricacies of the fact checking process. Like, I saw that miasma used to mean something akin to "pollution" in Ancient Greece while researching, but I don't have the linguistics background to understand the nuance

[@mysticalmikeday]

Reading your comment just made me think of the Jocko willink podcast and all he talks about regarding discipline. He notes the slip of infield soldiers tenuous grasp on discipline by noting unkemptneas of the gear, no time for shaving, the miasma of little details of things you SHOULD do that go unkempt because nobody has the second to straighten them.

[@lorenstiteler305]

The concept actually shows up earlier than the 5th century in the Chinese literature. In the early Han Dynasty text, the Huángdì Nèijīng, which is itself a compendium of still earlier texts, there is a single occurrence of the term 瘴 zhàng. This term appears in a passage describing pestilential disease and is understood to refer to putrid air generally arising from damp areas. This places the term more around the turn of the common era, if not older. Interestingly, though the term makes an appearance, as a concept it doesn't appear to have played a significant role in the development of Chinese medical theory and is conspicuously absent from the 傷寒論, or "Treatise on Cold Damage", a treatise on epidemic disease and the most famous herbal medicine text in the history of the field.

[@stevengill1736]

Err, what was the medical text, the Yellow Emperor's text?

[@lorenstiteler305]

@@stevengill1736 yep

[@oliviagoff3906]

So glad i came across your channel, i was genuinely surprised that not alot of people have found your channel. The content is really well amde and researched.

[@user-mo8ui7yz1n]

Patrick you have been such a pleasure to watch thank you for all you do.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I really appreciate the kind words. Thank you!

[@joelspliffbeaudette3750]

Awesome video! Great delivery 👊Thank you for sharing

[@nok5004]

Just found your channel and I wish I found it earlier!! I’m in the medical field and these things interest me so much and the way you explain everything is amazing!

[@DrTony-MD]

That's quality work Patrick , Keep going ! And give us more Medical History. Rooting for you 👏🏻

[@kgkitkat]

Can't believe I just found these videos. I just listened to all of them for the past few hours

[@zane4730]

just found your channel and wow your in depth coverage is phenomenal

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate the kinds words! Depth is what I aim for

[@TancheapMcFatass]

Just barely came across this channel, subscribed before I even watched the video, hope this page blows up!

[@NerdGamingOfficial]

I love your vids, been binging for a few days now!

[@rickyspeople]

This vid is blowing me away! I'm learning so many new things and really enjoying the pace. SUBBED! thanks!

[@nikevisor54]

Must-watch content for anyone curious about med-hist

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Going back to basics on these med-hist topics this year. Germ theory next time!

[@1timbarrett]

I am so excited to find your channel. If only I had discovered it a year ago…! Thanks for enriching the lives of others with your careful work. 🙏

[@KevinButler55]

Another fascinating video with some hilarious parts to make it stick. Keep up the incredible work!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Much appreciated! Part 2 in the germ theory saga coming soon. I'm shooting for the end of the month

[@heslip7042]

Excellent video as usual

[@thegatorhator6822]

I knew a lady in her 80s in 2012 who believed in Spontaneous Generation on a large scale. As in she believed if she ate a packet of biscuits and did not properly put in it the bin, instead leaving the wrapper on the bench, or worse yet, the floor that rats would spontaneously generate themselves under it. Same thing with smaller things like potato peals and flies. I tried to explain to her that life was not a video game where the developers spawned enemies out of sight but she simply would not accept it. Wild.

[@Clifford_Banes]

The only american not saying "my asthma". Thank you!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

It's an American English vs British English thing, if I remember correctly. I always preferred the UK "mee-az-muh" but to each their own!

[@dksdmusic]

Seriously Patrick, you’re doing a great job. I love your videos and always learn something fascinating from them.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate that a ton. A deep dive on Pasteur and Koch's contributions to germ theory in the next video

[@dksdmusic]

@@PatKellyTeaches Have a microbiology exam next month, will definitely watch the video. Cheers

[@goblinrat6119]

During The Blight a couple of years back, my mother basically came up with this idea by herself and was convinced that "tainted air" was spreading the disease. If someone borrowed her car, or if someone rode with her, she insisted on keeping the doors open and exiting the vehicle for at least 15 minutes afterwards. Even better if it was during the winter since she insisted the cold, freezing air would "purify the tainted air" and ensure that the disease would go away. She seemed to think that if the air got stale at all, or if there were any weird smells, the disease might just... appear, I suppose. I tried to explain that it wasn't airborne, and that at most she should be worried about surface contact or direct contact with other people, but she seemed to have resolved that this was her way of keeping safe. Since it was ultimately harmless I just shrugged. But it was intresting to notice how there seems to be something quite intuitive (as in matching human intuitions, coming to people's minds quite easily) about the idea of disease happening due to air issues.

[@hidrego98]

"The blight a couple of years back", you gonna need to be more specific.

[@funlover163]

Dude. Covid spreads through air. Your mom was not incorrect

[@tomshahriari6602]

Brilliant series. Bravo!

[@ananananabop]

So, it was a bit like aromatherapy! That’s interesting, great video!

[@everflores9484]

Babe wake up New Patrick Kelly video just dropped

[@CZPC]

Love this channel.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I appreciate that a ton. More videos coming soon!

[@SirWilliamKidney]

"13th century UK" haha I'm afraid our kingdoms were not quite so United at the time :P

[@Test-md8wu]

I was so shocked to see you only have 12k views

[@duohensheng]

it brings me joy to see we have the same plague doctor plushy. mine sits on my desk and accompanies me since my 2020 thesis on global approaches to pandemics 🤝

[@LuSquared_]

Super cool topic!

[@thegatorhator6822]

A brilliant video on miasma theory. I think too many focus just on the European origins and don't cover how it showed up elsewhere or the idea it could an intuitive idea to a culture without a better explanation, them coming close but not quite getting it.

[@bluestrife28]

Giralomo Fracastoro is the coolest name I have ever heard. Good vid, I always wanted to understand this topic better .

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Bro. And that isn't even the best one! There was a physician / alchemist in the 1500s that went by Paracelsus, but his full name was Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim. Hands down the coolest name in medical history.

[@quiestinliteris]

​@@PatKellyTeachesAnd of course, "Paracelsus" means "Better than Celsus" - the author of De Medicina, whom I believe you have discussed. Our Theophtastus had zero self esteem issues.

[@MarkusSimpson]

Obsessed with this channel, it's addictive just like @TastingHistory 🙌

[@PatKellyTeaches]

I love that channel too!

[@pkre707]

Wow, what a find!

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Ayyy thanks for the kind words 😎

[@hibatica]

this channel is what KZbin was made for

[@kjaze]

How about a look at Royal Raymond Rife's microscope? Reportedly his microscope observes live organisms without a staining process which introduced exogenous chemicals. This microscope changed the way Rife viewed medicine. Interesting subject to explore.

[@justsomeone6985]

pleeeease continue, the game is awesome!

[@mikebrown9953]

Is it just me? Or is Animalcules hilarious... Now to my credit, I am high 😂 but I had to stop the video and laugh at that one lol.

[@Yayojayoful]

My friend's mom is a baby boomer from Scandanavia and she still seemed to believe in miasma theory. She'd always make her family clean whenever she thought the air in the house smelled too badly. "That's how people get sick, when the air smells like this," she'd explain while we played video games in my friend's messy room.

[@empatheticrambo4890]

Fascinating

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Thank you! More to come soon

[@notusneo]

Wait how come you don't have a 100k subs already

[@cjwojoe]

You can see how they almost had it right with the different theories but didn't have the understanding of viruses or bacteria on a microscopic scale. The idea of sickness being carried on the air or seasons changing what causes illnesses. They had to base all their knowledge on what they could see.

[@robertcopp2411]

I remember being a really little kid and coming up with miasma theory on my own. I knew certain things made you sick, and they were all dirty and smelly things. I knew touching them made you sick, so I just assumed being too close to them could also made you sick. I didn’t find out what Miasma was until I was in High School and The Black Dahlia Murder released the Miasma album

[@RiskyFishness]

I see this all the time and I can’t help but think he’s basically wearing Ppe with a respirator. Yeah not as effective but I can see how while misguided this could reduce transmission

[@cako666]

Idk why "diarrhea season" sounds so funny to me. Imagine not being able to trust your farts for the entirety of fall 😂

[@lemsavage9473]

I adore how global the history is, it's so interesting how islamic, chinese, European and others all advanced their medicine in different ways

[@ramonhausmann9496]

name of the painting at 1:10 ?

[@stevengill1736]

So that's where enzyme came from, neat!

[@Bri-ss1gu]

I wonder what theories are considered kind of obscure and not taken seriously today that will turn out to be true and dominate the medical field in the future!

[@necropolistc6357]

"ring around the roses, pockets full of poses ashes, ashes we all fall down" - plague rhyme... guess the good smelling roses and poses didn't work

[@He-Who-Died]

5:09 Just wondering, why is that woman's chest exposed?

[@evanrutherfordlazyahole9079]

Were bringing back the miasma and luminous aether at least I am.

[@ajovanos1]

I'd spent my Saturday with you 🎉❤

[@deafviolinist]

bit bubble at 20:16

[@rebelheart4456]

I will neve see those videos...

[@iso-kun1644]

uhh the guy describing rhe air quality of Ireland also appears to say "bodies don't rot in Ireland" and that's a "proven and certain fact" which... wow. i guess i didn't know that about Ireland

[@PatKellyTeaches]

What's wild is that he wasn't far off! Bodies preserved in bogs, like the ones in Ireland, decompose way, way slower than in other conditions.The National Museum of Ireland has a page about them, but be warned, the images might make you queasy www.museum.ie/en-IE/Collections-Research/Irish-Antiquities-Division-Collections/Collections-List-(1)/Iron-Age/Bog-Bodies-Research-Project

[@iso-kun1644]

@@PatKellyTeaches that's really cool but me, personally, I would have said something like "it is known that ireland has many bogs in which bodies do not decay" lol also thank you for the video :3 i randomly got recommended it by yt and I've watched a bunch more of your videos since, keep up the good work 👍👍

[@Pixels27]

As functional as it is creepy? So its not creepy?

[@freshlycutlawn4396]

Here's a comment for the algorithm.

[@yura2424]

3:46 Everyone knows it naturally. This is called being disguised

[@Joy-TheLazyCatLady]

Scholasticas! Another cat name. 😂🤣😂

[@user-sv6fw1qg8c]

Now Inuyasha makes so much sense 😅

[@gpgthefunnyreligion4927]

13:40 - 14:15

[@jodifoster9820]

why’d we stop going by diarrhea season… i like that more lol

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Ahh yes, allergy season (spring), back-sweat season (summer), flu season (fall), and diarrhea season (winter.

[@kevinkelly2736]

Is Kerry Kelly your uncle? Are you my cousin?

[@mikaelalerrandro1372]

I'm here because of Fear & Hunger 🤓

[@aymenboussouar1880]

I love u

[@umarmars47]

Miasma theory reminds me of Covid 19

[@ironmaidenmetalgod]

Algorithm comment.

[@johnsolo1701d]

TFW you watch a youtube video and the creator has 100x less subscribers than you assume (and they deserve)

[@PatKellyTeaches]

That means a lot, thank you! I've got a series on the history of antibiotics coming out soon!

[@hossdelgado626]

Myiasma, no meiasma

[@pingnick]

🩺♾

[@enriquekahn9405]

Wait, Europeans smoked tobacco before the Columbian Exchange? That doesn't sound right.

[@PatKellyTeaches]

Good catch! Tobacco smoke was recommended during London's plague outbreak in the 17th century, after tobacco had been introduced to Europe. I inadvertently rolled remedies from all plague outbreaks into one there, my apologies

[@enriquekahn9405]

@@PatKellyTeaches thanks for clarifying, I was having a Mandela Effect moment for a second there

[@DoggyHateFire]

Imagine going back in time and teaching people basic health practices and disease prevention and being worshiped as a god because far less people die because you know how disease actually works lol

[@MisterBones223]

Bad smelling food/drinks makes you sick, so bad smells make you sick. No 20-minute video is needed, lol Jk, I'm sure you have interesting things to point out

[@FiddleMiA]

Bump

[@truthseek3017]

It was the satanists and heathens that were rotting and decaying.