The theory basically proposed that malaria was transmitted by mosquitoes, in opposition to the centuries-old medical dogma that malaria was due to bad air, or miasma. The first scientific idea was postulated in 1851 by Charles E. Johnson, who argued that miasma had no direct relationship with malaria. Although Johnson's hypothesis was forgotten, the arrival and validation of the germ theory of diseases in the late 19th century began to shed new lights.[1] When Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran discovered that malaria was caused by a protozoan parasite in 1880, the miasma theory began to subside.[2][3][4]