Why foul air seemed like a cause
Before germs were understood, many people explained plague through miasma: the idea that disease could arise from corrupted, poisonous air. The theory offered an explanation for why outbreaks seemed to spread through crowded, dirty places—and it made smell feel like a warning sign. If foul air caused illness, changing or countering the air seemed like a reasonable defense.
One bad smell against another
Some physicians and writers recommended strong odors as protection, including the smell of a person’s own flatulence. Keeping it in a jar meant having the odor ready to inhale when exposure to dangerous air was feared. The logic was not that the smell killed a known organism; it was that a competing odor might drive off, mask, or neutralize harmful air.
That reasoning fit a broader pattern of remedies built around fragrant substances, smoke, and other pungent smells. The nose was treated almost like a crude instrument for judging the air: if a smell seemed powerful enough to overpower what was feared, it might seem powerful enough to protect the body.
What the remedy could—and could not—do
The jar offered a sense of control in a frightening epidemic, but odor does not prevent plague infection. Plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, not by bad-smelling air. The remedy’s striking detail is therefore also a window into an earlier medical world: when people could not see the cause of disease, they tried to defend themselves using the clue they could smell.
