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The Great Stink: 1858 & The Forbidden Soup of the Thames
What happens when you put 2.5 million people in a city with no plumbing during a heatwave? You get the "Great Stink," a disaster so bad it literally stopped the gears of the British Empire.
In this episode, we explore the summer of stench. We cover:
Miasma Theory: The belief that "bad air" was the killer, leading doctors to prescribe "good smells" while ignoring the poop in the water.
The "Committee of Stench": How Parliament formed a special committee just to figure out why outside smelled like death.
The Legacy: How a summer of suffering led to the modern sewer system we use today.
In the…
The skinny
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