The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs

1 “Not Everything That Stinks Kills”: Odors and Germs in the Streets of Paris, 1880

1 “Not Everything That Stinks Kills” Odors and Germs in the Streets of Paris, 1880 I n the late summer of 1880 in Paris, death was in the air, and it smelled like excrement. That, at least, was the prevailing opinion at the time, shared and vociferously proclaimed by scientists, medical doctors, elected representatives, and ordinary Parisians. For more than two months, oppressive and insu=erable odors pervaded the air of the capital, occasionally disappearing and then reappearing with even greater intensity according to the indecipherable rhythm of mysterious forces. More than a mere annoyance , the stench that gripped the city between late July and early October of 1880 represented a genuine public menace, a clear and present danger to the health of the population that needed to be met with a correspondingly drastic public response: “Complaints came from all sides. . . . The press protested violently against the government’s negligence. . . . People approached one another with but one greeting: ‘Do you smell that? What a stench!’ It was a real public calamity. Parisians were panic-stricken; public o;cials were anguished; cabinet ministers were troubled.”1 Parisians high and low, powerful and plebeian exercised themselves into a frenzied mixture of terror and outrage during the Great Stink of 1880.2 The chorus of popular protest—“The odors are truly unbearable”; “We’ve never seen anything like this!”; “This can’t go on!”3 —was seconded by the o;cial sanction of scientific authority. A government commission composed of the nation’s leading medical scientists (including the great Louis Pasteur himself) concluded, “These odors that have spread over Paris . . . can pose a threat to the public health.”4 For two months, predictions of impending plagues vied for headlines with political recriminations and vivid descriptions of the sickening stench. Ten years after the Prussians laid siege to the city in 1870–71, Parisians once again described themselves as besieged by a ruthless and implacable force. Even allowing for the hyperbole characteristic of French public discourse (especially in the popular press), the intensity of the complaints is striking. “Our great and beautiful city . . . [is being] turned into an immense cesspool, which soon . . . will be uninhabitable,” one newspaper claimed.5 “The foul stench sweeping down on Paris has provoked a general outcry . . . [and] public lamentations,” another reported.6 Disgust, anger, and fear combined in a volatile mix, which, although it seemed to dissipate with the odors when autumn fell, testifies to the depth of the anxieties that beset a society in the throes of dramatic historical change. There are times when one must take such animated public complaints and dramatic lamentations with a grain of salt. After all, to take one obvious example, the weather can cause widespread death and destruction—and provoke considerable, spirited discussion among the population—without signifying any important historical developments. What makes the Great Stink of 1880 (that is, the public reaction as well as the odors themselves) di=erent from any of a number of extreme or unpleasant meteorological phenomena? The answer lies in the widespread, almost reflexive assumptions of Parisians in 1880 regarding the spread of disease and the nature of government responsibility. Although o;cials and ordinary citizens debated the cause of the odors as well as appropriate public and private remedies, there was a remarkable degree of consensus on two central issues: first, that the smells represented an urgent danger to the public health, and second, that the authorities—that is, the government, in consultation with scientific and technical experts—bore a correspondingly urgent responsibility to do something about them. The deep-rooted familiarity and persistence of the first thesis and the novelty of the second in 1880, among other things, mark the Great Stink as a historical watershed. Eighteen eighty, in fact, was a pivotal year in several respects. In what can be seen as a crucible of modernity, fundamental changes were reshaping French politics, science, and culture to an extent that only became clear much later. A durably republican, democratic political regime came to power for the first time; a nation humiliated by military defeat grappled with demographic decline and a perceived loss of national vitality; the memory of revolutionary upheaval and the threat of social conflict continued to haunt the wealthy, while intractable poverty and injustice nurtured bitter resentment among the poor; a rural exodus put a tremendous strain “Not Everything That Stinks Kills” 13 14...