Miasma
Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Dublin
★★★★☆
The history of medicine is subject to what EP Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity”. From our vantage point of scientific sophistication, it can be easy to scoff at now-debunked treatments, methods and theories.
One virtue of Colin Murphy’s new play, Miasma, is that it avoids caricaturing the errors of the past as the product of stupidity or wickedness. Initially performed at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (then touring), this densely researched historical drama centres on rival approaches to tackling cholera in mid-19th-century London.
On the one hand, Edwin Chadwick, commissioner of the Board of Health, is convinced that the disease is spread by “noxious clouds” emanating from human waste.
As played by Karl Quinn, he is a paragon of Victorian rectitude and moral zeal, determined to deliver Londoners from the “age of stink” by creating a system of sewers that will channel the city’s “night soil” into the Thames. That crusade on behalf of public health sets Chadwick against laissez-faire dogma as well as the vested interests of the water companies.
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On the other, the physician John Snow combines erratic experiments in anaesthesiology (causing the death of a bird during a botched demonstration) with a keen interest in the street-level data of disease.
Noting wide local variations in death rates on detective-like trawls through the city, he realises that cholera is transmitted by contaminated water rather than vapours. But, lacking Chadwick’s gravitas, Snow struggles, in Robbie O’Connor’s nerdy portrayal, to convince a medical establishment wedded to miasma theory. (Presentation, as we saw during the Covid pandemic, counts for just as much as data in public health.)
That climactic encounter highlights the dynamic energy of Samantha Cade’s in-the-round staging. Performers sitting among the audience challenge Snow with cries of “Survey? What kind of science is that?” and “Data is no substitute for common sense”.
Those objections – absurd to our ears – are laden with dramatic irony. But they also draw attention to the inherent uncertainties of scientific inquiry, where, as Snow himself insists, the evidence is “rarely perfect”. Only decades after his death in 1858, at the age of 45, would his theories win the day.
Though Snow is the hero of the tale, Chadwick’s fixation with miasma is also depicted as an indirect driver of social progress, for the sewer system he championed would deliver vital improvements in sanitation (even though the science underlying that mission proved mistaken).
Alongside the two campaigners, we encounter more than a half a dozen other characters, dexterously performed by Quinn, Jack Gavin, Niamh McGrath and Peter Rothwell.
These include a vacillating prime minister, an imperious chancellor (never shy about sacrificing lives on the altar of sound finances) and the impoverished Soho resident Sarah Lewis, whose husband and child die of cholera. That real-life figure, who becomes central to Snow’s investigation, provides Miasma’s intellectually charged plot with some emotional context.
Her story seems a bit underdeveloped, however. I emerged from Murphy’s tightly structured one-hour play with the unhabitual feeling that it could be 15 or 20 minutes longer.
Miasma, staged by Verdant Productions, is at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland, Dublin, until Thursday, April 16th; Trinity College Dublin on Friday, April 17th; Larkin Community College, Dublin, on Monday, April 20th; Seán O’Casey Theatre, East Wall, Dublin, on Tuesday, April 21st; Bray town hall, Co Wicklow, on Thursday, April 23rd; Humanarium at RCSI, Dublin, on Friday, April 24th; James Joyce Centre, Dublin, on Tuesday, April 28th, and Thursday, April 30th; Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, on Wednesday, April 29th; Garter Lane Theatre, Waterford, on Saturday, May 2nd; Trap Door Theatre, University College Dublin, on Tuesday, May 5th; Venue, Ratoath, Co Meath, on Wednesday, May 6th; Tallaght Hospital, Dublin, on Thursday, May 7th; and Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, on Friday, May 8th
