miasma

Take, for example, Kennedy’s staunch rejection of germ theory in favor of “miasma theory.”

The harvest of that change was an inaugural meeting of the new panel that was enveloped in a miasma of confused, uninformed debate.

Few writers since Henry James can create an atmosphere of doubt around events and character as effectively as this author does, and in “Venetian Vespers” the miasma thickens at every turn.

Above all, we experience a pervasive miasma of helplessness as we are forced to watch this intolerable train wreck.

In such a milieu, Hine’s troubling 1908 photographs would easily disappear, perhaps seizing a moment but soon evaporating into the visual miasma that floods the zone daily.