miasm

“Chills and fever have been attributed for ages to ‘miasm,’ an emanation from the earth so subtle that the ablest chemist was not able to detect it.

But what the physical properties of this miasm are, or how it finds access to the body, or how it is eliminated, are alike utterly unknown to us.

Rats, however, are commonly infected as if by a miasm before the disease appears in man.

The deadly miasms of Central America, the pestilential atmospheres of Central Africa, and the frozen mists of either pole, are braved by the inquiring travellers of the civilized races, but not with impunity.

Surrounded by an atmosphere densely impregnated with the miasm of a false religion and a corrupt morality, the ennobling thought of a true God and the moral accountability of man never enters their minds.