Crossword-Solution: MIASM 5 letters, 9 clues 🏆 scrabble score: 9

Hitherto the cause of contagion, by which certain maladies spread from individual to individual, had been a total mystery, quite unillumined by the vague terms "miasm," "humor," "virus," and the like cloaks of ignorance.

The brightest house and cheeriest outlook in nature will be made somber by the constant presence of a doctor, and the wandering around of an unseen, but ever felt, specter in the shape of miasm....Malaria-malus, bad; aria, air--means, in its common definition, simply bad air.

The strongest example of a malarious locality one might make would be in suggesting a marshy valley in a tropical climate, so overrun with fixed water as to destroy a prolific vegetation, yet not covering it enough to protect the garbage from the putrefying influences of the sun; this valley, in turn, so environed with hills as to shut off a circulation of air....Ground newly broken is not unapt to generate miasm.

This results from the sudden exposure of long-buried vegetable matter to the influences of moisture and heat....It may readily be conceived that malarious situations exist where the miasm is not sufficient in quantity to produce the effects of intermittent or bilious fever, yet where there is quite enough of it to keep a man feeling good for nothing,--he is not sick, but he is never well.

The sporadic poisons have an intimate relationship with dampness; miasm lives in it as does a snail in his shell.