The miasmatists had plenty of science and statistics and anecdotal evidence to demonstrate that the smells of London weren’t killing people. But their gut instincts—or, more like it, their amygdalas—kept telling them otherwise. All of John Snow’s detailed, rigorous analysis of the water companies and the transmission routes of the Horsleydown outbreak couldn’t compete with a single whiff of the air in Bermondsey. The miasmatists were unable to override the alarm system that had evolved so many aeons before. They mistook the smoke for the fire.
