You searched for: “miasmatisms
miasmatism (s) (noun), miasmatisms (pl)
A term used to indicate that cholera and other diseases were contracted by breathing air contaminated by disease-containing "clouds".

The claim that foul-smelling emanations spread disease was quintessential miasmatism.

—Based on information from
The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs
by David S. Barnes; The Johns Hopkins University Press; Baltimore Maryland; 2006, page 44.
This entry is located in the following unit: miasm-, miasma-, miasmat- (page 1)