How to Be a Victorian: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Victorian Life

by Ruth Goodman

pores of the skin allowed disease to enter and penetrate the body. While healthy sweating allowed poisons and effluvia to exit through the pores, it had been thought important to protect the skin from too much exposure to sources of infection; water opened the pores and was therefore best avoided. Disease was believed to be carried in evil miasmas (vapours) in the air, thickest and most dangerous where smell and damp were most evident. Walk through the stinking mists rising from tanners’ pits or stale dung heaps, past open sewers or the bleaching and dyeing works, and infection would be hanging in the air around you, threatening to enter your nose, mouth or skin. The sensible person would have avoided these areas when they could and carried scents to drive away the miasmas. They would also have kept their skin covered and sealed against such threats.