“The Great Stink” arose from human excrement piled along the riverbanks—a problem that had been growing worse as London became more and more populated. As the scientist Michael Faraday, famed for his work on electromagnetism, observed, “The feculence rolled up in clouds so dense that they were visible at the surface.” As he sailed down the river one afternoon, he noted that the water was an “opaque pale brown fluid.”
