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Book Review
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Volume 355:2051 November 9, 2006 Number 19
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The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs

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By David S. Barnes. 314 pp., illustrated. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. $35. ISBN 0-8018-8349-0.

As recent examples attest, managing an environmental or infectious crisis, real or perceived, requires understanding more than the science. The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs, by historian of science David S. Barnes, provides historical examples and cultural perspectives that can prove useful today.

What was the Great Stink (or, perhaps more accurately, what were the Great Stinks)? For more than 2 months, from late July to early October 1880, a disgusting stench assaulted Parisian nostrils. Despite lack of sound evidence, there was a consensus that these apparently fecal odors "represented an urgent danger . . . [Full Text of this Article]



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