OK, so, contagious disease. I'm really confused about the history of this idea.
I'm going to restrict attention to the "broader West" -- Europe, the Middle East, etc. I'm sure these ideas have a totally different history in China and India, but I don't know anything about that and that's not what I'm confused about; I'm confused about the history of this idea in the West.
Like, we all know about germ theory vs miasma theory, right? Germ theory posited person-to-person transmission of disease, that it was in fact contagious. Whereas miasma theory posited that diseases were not in fact contagious, that they spread via the external influence of miasmas. What appeared to be contagion was in fact just correlation, not causation.
OK, but -- miasma theory vs germ theory was a 19th century debate. What preceded that?
I'd assumed that what precded that was just naive contagionism -- yes, diseases are contagious, but we don't know why. Miasma theory, in asserting that diseases aren't actually contagious, is the sort of too-clever-by-half theory you only come up with after you have such sophisticated ideas as "correlation is not causation" to base it off of, you know? Obviously pre-modern people knew disease is contagious, right?
What's confusing is I keep seeing all these assertions that no, pre-modern people in Europe believed in miasma theory, or how Girolamo Fracastoro first introduced the idea of contagion, etc. And y'know I'd take these assertions at their word except that they make no freaking sense.
Quarantines are ancient. The word "quarantine" itself comes from a term for a practice used during the Black Death. Like there seem to be all sorts of indicators that people in that corner of the world have in fact known about contagious diseases for thousands of years based on how they behaved! So how does it possibly make sense to say that Europeans didn't come up with the idea of contagion until the 16th century, or later??
One possibility might be that contagion was low-status folk belief, and miasma theory (or at least the strong version of it, that denied that contagion existed, rather than just asserting that miasma might also cause disease) was some high-status intellectual belief? But if that's the case, why don't I see explicit assertions to that effect?
Wikipedia gives the vague statement "It was also initially believed that miasmas were propagated through worms from ulcers within those affected by a plague." (This appears to come from some 1765 encylopedia?) So perhaps there was some room within miasma theory for the idea of contagion, at least at some point...?
I'm just so confused here... (you know, I should probably just ask /r/AskHistorians about this...)
[Edit: Did that, we'll see if it gets responses.]
[Edit again: It did, and the response was helpful! Hooray!]
I'm going to restrict attention to the "broader West" -- Europe, the Middle East, etc. I'm sure these ideas have a totally different history in China and India, but I don't know anything about that and that's not what I'm confused about; I'm confused about the history of this idea in the West.
Like, we all know about germ theory vs miasma theory, right? Germ theory posited person-to-person transmission of disease, that it was in fact contagious. Whereas miasma theory posited that diseases were not in fact contagious, that they spread via the external influence of miasmas. What appeared to be contagion was in fact just correlation, not causation.
OK, but -- miasma theory vs germ theory was a 19th century debate. What preceded that?
I'd assumed that what precded that was just naive contagionism -- yes, diseases are contagious, but we don't know why. Miasma theory, in asserting that diseases aren't actually contagious, is the sort of too-clever-by-half theory you only come up with after you have such sophisticated ideas as "correlation is not causation" to base it off of, you know? Obviously pre-modern people knew disease is contagious, right?
What's confusing is I keep seeing all these assertions that no, pre-modern people in Europe believed in miasma theory, or how Girolamo Fracastoro first introduced the idea of contagion, etc. And y'know I'd take these assertions at their word except that they make no freaking sense.
Quarantines are ancient. The word "quarantine" itself comes from a term for a practice used during the Black Death. Like there seem to be all sorts of indicators that people in that corner of the world have in fact known about contagious diseases for thousands of years based on how they behaved! So how does it possibly make sense to say that Europeans didn't come up with the idea of contagion until the 16th century, or later??
One possibility might be that contagion was low-status folk belief, and miasma theory (or at least the strong version of it, that denied that contagion existed, rather than just asserting that miasma might also cause disease) was some high-status intellectual belief? But if that's the case, why don't I see explicit assertions to that effect?
Wikipedia gives the vague statement "It was also initially believed that miasmas were propagated through worms from ulcers within those affected by a plague." (This appears to come from some 1765 encylopedia?) So perhaps there was some room within miasma theory for the idea of contagion, at least at some point...?
I'm just so confused here... (you know, I should probably just ask /r/AskHistorians about this...)
[Edit: Did that, we'll see if it gets responses.]
[Edit again: It did, and the response was helpful! Hooray!]
