A DISEASE CAUSED BY BAD AIR?
The word "malaria" comes from the Italian for "bad air". Until the second half of the 1800s, even mainstream medical opinion held that many diseases were cause by bad air or "miasmas". While this theory was wrong, it was not altogether silly. Cleaning up sources of "bad air", such as smelly garbage piles, open sewers, and foetid swamps, did reduce disease outbreaks, though not for the reasons thought.
The back of the Ayer's Ague Cure trade card puts forward this explanation for the disease, referring to "miasmatic poisons" that enter the blood from the lungs.
This card does not have a printing date on it, so we don't know if it was made before 1880 or after, when the parasite that causes malaria was identified and the "bad air" theory of its cause firmly laid to rest in scientific circles.
The advertiser also claims proudly that the Ague Cure "contains no quinine", although quinine had been the standard medical treatment for malaria since the early 1800s.
