An Perry G
New York University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, New York, New York 10009, USA.
Yale J Biol Med. 2004 May;77(3-4):75-100.
For roughly forty years, from 1870 to 1910, Americans recognized and feared gases emanating from sewers, believing that they were responsible for causing an array of diseases. Fears of sewer gas arose from deeper anxieties toward contact with decomposing organic matter and the vapors emitted from such refuse. These anxieties were exacerbated by the construction of sewers across the country during the mid-to-late-nineteenth century, which concentrated waste emanations and connected homes to one another. The result was the birth of sewer gas and the attribution of sickness and death to it, as well as the development of a host of plumbing devices and, especially, bathroom fixtures, to combat sewer gas. The rise of the germ theory, laboratory science, and belief in disease specificity, however, transformed the threat of sewer gas, eventually replacing it (and the larger fear of miasmas) with the threat of germs. The germ theory framework, by 1910, proved more suitable than the sewer gas framework in explaining disease causation; it is this suitability that often shapes the relationship between science and society.
从1870年到1910年的大约四十年间，美国人认识到并惧怕来自下水道的气体，认为这些气体是引发一系列疾病的罪魁祸首。对下水道气体的恐惧源于对接触腐烂有机物以及此类垃圾散发的蒸汽的更深层次焦虑。19世纪中后期全国范围内下水道的建设加剧了这些焦虑，因为它集中了废物排放并使各家各户相互连通。结果就是下水道气体的诞生以及将疾病和死亡归因于它，还有为对抗下水道气体而开发的一系列管道装置，尤其是浴室装置。然而，细菌理论、实验室科学的兴起以及对疾病特异性的信念改变了下水道气体的威胁，最终用细菌的威胁取代了它（以及对瘴气的更大恐惧）。到1910年，细菌理论框架在解释疾病成因方面比下水道气体框架更合适；正是这种合适性常常塑造了科学与社会之间的关系。
