By the 1880s, the convergence of Koch's work on anthrax (1876) and tuberculosis (1882) with Pasteur's earlier research had decisively replaced miasma theory—which attributed disease to foul air—with germ theory as the dominant medical paradigm.

The displacement of miasma theory by germ theory in 1880 transformed poetic imagery surrounding disease and urban life. Poets began to reimagine the relationship between environment and body, as seen in the works of late Victorian and early modernist writers who grappled with the implications of this scientific shift.