Anne W. Gilfoil

Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Decimonónica

Volume

6

Issue

1

Publisher

Decimonónica

Publication Date

2009

First Page

34

Last Page

45

Abstract

At the end of the eighteenth century, new theories about disease transmission would have an enormous effect on city planning. The miasma theory challenged the old contact infection model of contagion. Disease transmission was no longer direct as in person-to- person contagion; it was, rather, the result of exposure to certain conditions in the atmosphere. Emanations from the earth produced by decomposing bodies and excrement poisoned the air and transmitted disease (Corbin 13–32). The miasma theory left a deep imprint on popular imagination. In a study of Madrid, published as late as 1902, the public health expert Philiph Hauser spoke of a longstanding belief in “la gran importancia atribuida al acceso del aire de la alcantarilla al interior de la casa” (1: 195). The miasma theory’s effect on the professional class would be profound as well. Scientists reasoned that if environmental conditions were the cause of disease, then these circumstances need only be modified in order to eradicate it.1 During the nineteenth century, three epidemics of cholera devastated Spain, the last one occurring in 1885 while Leopoldo Alas was writing La Regenta (Valis 208). Because cholera struck mainly the urban poor, it was considered a disease of the city (Briggs 76–78; Rosenberg 133). Hence, an ideal urban organization promised to eliminate disease (Stevenson 5). A traditional fatalism in the face of disease began to give way to rhetoric of reform, a reform to be enacted on the urban landscape.

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