A River Runs Putrid: A Summer of Filth, 1858
The city of London sweltered in the heat of summer, 1858. But it was not merely the sun that parched the metropolis. An even more unpleasant force infested its very heart: the River Thames. Years of industrial discharges had transformed London's lifeblood into a nauseating odor. The stench was all-consuming, a miasma that clung to every cobblestone