There is no word more likely to rile an infectious diseases doctor than the word “miasma”. It’s the root of all quackery, the mother of misconception - and for over 2,000 years it misdirected medicine and medics.

The word comes from the ancient Greek for pollution and describes a “bad air” that spreads illness. In cartoons, a miasma is inevitably drawn as a noxious green cloud that can drift on the breeze for miles.

The idea was first proposed by Hippocrates. “Whenever many men are attacked by one disease at the same time, the cause should be assigned to that which is most common, and which we all use most. This it is which we breathe in,” he wrote.

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