"The strong smell of excrement pervaded the environment, and the
stench of public places was both terrible and ceaselessly
condemned. The vile smelling effluvia of the faubourg St.-Marcel
de Justice, in the Louvre, in the Tuileries, at the Museum, even
at the Opera...the quays revolted the sense of smell." Excrement
was everywhere: in alleys; at the foot of milestones; in cabs;
in the gutters into which the cesspools were emptied; on the
urine-stained walls of houses.Things weren't much better in this
country. NYC in 1865: Domestic garbage and filth of every kind
is thrown into the streets, covering their surface, filling the
gutters, obstructing the sewer culverts, and sending forth
perennial emanations which must generate pestiferous disease.Is
there any wonder that there was pestiferous disease? People died
from infections due to their living conditions. But survival
rates increased long before the discoveries of antibiotics and
most vaccines. Remember, in 1865, the germ theory of disease was
not commonly