Continued Confessions

with early morning thoughts

I woke up this morning with miasma on my mind. While that sentence may have been evoked from a pop song title which I can’t remember at this time, the word itself is one I have known forever but never really defined. So being the person of impulse that I am, I got up right away, prepared my morning hot lemon water, and began researching the word. For any of you who have been with me since the beginning, my very first Substack was a list of “P” words which I was inspired to write about. I definitely have been having an interesting morning so far delving into this word.

PubMed Central discusses “Death and miasma in Victorian London: an obstinate belief” so perhaps the word is in my genes. The library goes on to relate that “this belief that most, if not all, disease was caused by inhaling air that was infected through exposure to corrupting matter. Such matter might be rotting corpses, the exhalations of other people already infected, sewage, or even rotting vegetation. The ‘miasmatic’ explanation of the cause of disease figured prominently in the long debates among the people who were responsible for combatting the cholera epidemics that afflicted Britain, and particularly London, between 1831 and 1866.” This fascinating subject goes on to reveal that the theory actually did some good by concentrating scientists’ attention on the causes of disease which led them away from the air to the polluted water.

But back to miasma. Another definition was found from Greek mythology as “a contagious power . . . that has an independent life of its own. Until purged by the sacrificial death of the wrongdoer, society would be chronically infected by the catastrophe.” This definition ends with the sentence “Attempts to cleanse a city or a society from miasma may have the opposite effect of reinforcing it.” That last sentence enlightens me as to why the word has been delivered to me this morning. I believe we are currently infected with a miasma in the form of a corrupting influence and that if we could just stop giving it attention it would more quickly disperse.

I’ve always been an optimistic soul, so excuse me if this sounds silly. But for God’s sake let’s move on from the drama and incivility of the orange man’s ego. Let him fade into obscurity like the London fog.