John Evelyn's 'Fumifugium'

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Missed in History Class

Episode: John Evelyn's 'Fumifugium'
Hosts: Tracy V. Wilson & Holly Frey
Date: February 2, 2026

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Overview

This episode examines Fumifugium, a 1661 treatise on air pollution by John Evelyn, best known as a diarist and an early environmental thinker. The hosts explore Evelyn’s life, the environmental context of 17th-century London, the origins and contents of Fumifugium, its recommendations, and its historical impact. They also reflect on how discussions about air pollution and environmental health have persisted from Evelyn's day to the present.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Discovery and Relevance of Fumifugium

• Tracy shares how Evelyn’s treatise on air pollution was discovered while researching the history of rickets.
• She reflects on the contemporary relevance after recent changes at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regarding health costs and air pollution regulations.

  "Wow, John Evelyn wrote a treatise on air pollution? I had no idea. Fascinating...people have been talking about the harms of air pollution for hundreds of years." (03:29)

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2. John Evelyn’s Biography

(04:29–13:42)

Early Life & Education

• Born October 31, 1620, in Surrey, into a wealthy family due to a gunpowder patent.
• Raised partly by maternal grandparents, began keeping a diary at age 11.
• Attended Balliol College, Oxford, and the Middle Temple for legal/social connections; did not complete a degree.

  "He started keeping a diary at the age of 11. He may have started this diary by writing his notes in an almanac." (05:17)

Turbulent Times

• Experienced family loss and financial changes as a second son.
• Traveled Europe during the English Civil War, choosing not to fight to avoid risking confiscation of his family’s estate.
• Married Mary Browne, daughter of the English ambassador to Paris, who was much younger but seen as his intellectual peer.

  "Although Mary was English, she had spent almost all of her life in France... described as Evelyn's intellectual equal and as being very kind and sweet." (07:37)

Career & Contributions

• Upon return to England: life of moderate means, personal losses, and focus on gardening and writing.
• Wrote on diverse topics: science (including an English translation of Lucretius), etching, numismatics, botany, conservation, and even salads.
• Founding member of the Royal Society (1661).

  "Evelyn wrote about 30 books over the course of his life, and several of them were focused on conservation and the natural world." (10:52)

• Served on various commissions (fire rebuilding, plantations, Navy, prisoners of war), and became friends with Samuel Pepys.
• Died in 1706; his diary was published posthumously, becoming an important historical resource.

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3. Historical Context: Air Quality and Fuel in London

(17:24–22:28)

Prevalence of Coal

• London used wood, charcoal, and eventually increasingly sulfurous bituminous coal ("sea coal") from the 12th century onward.
• Deforestation and import troubles made coal more common.
• Coal burning supplemented by breweries, metalsmiths, etc., as forests declined and winters worsened during the Little Ice Age.
• Pollution increased as chimneys remained short and urban population rose.
• Efforts at regulation focused on discomfort to monarchs, not public health. E.g., Queen Elizabeth I's and James I's targeted bans.

  "For the most part, this was not about the idea of public health or coal smoke being bad for people in general. It was about the health of the monarch and their family..." (21:13)

Pollution’s Effects

• By mid-1600s, London was extremely polluted, paving the way for Evelyn's Fumifugium.

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4. John Evelyn’s Fumifugium: Origins, Intent, and Content

(22:28–36:56)

Why Fumifugium Was Written

• Evelyn sought royal favor and solutions for London’s air pollution at the beginning of Charles II’s reign.
• Hoped to secure an appointment or gain favor for his wife at court.

  "Evelyn hoped to both impress the King and encourage him to do something about the problem of coal smoke in London." (23:36)

Possible Political Allegory

• Mark Jenner argues Fumifugium also functioned as a metaphor: purging city smoke as purging political corruption.

  "Evelyn might also have meant it at least somewhat symbolically, with the removal of all the coal pollution in London serving as a stand in for the removal of corruption and unwanted politics..." (24:07)

Structure and Language

Title and Dedication

• Title: Fumifugium, or The Inconvenience of the Air and Smoke of London Dissipated...
• Lucretius epigraph: “how easily the heavy smoke of coal seeps into the brain.”

  Notable quote to the king:
  "That all the rooms, galleries and places about it were filled and infested with it, and that to such a degree as men could hardly discern one another for the cloud, and none could support without manifest inconveniency." (25:27)

Condemnation of London Smoke

• Highly descriptive, alarming language about the ugliness and health dangers of coal smoke.

  "The city of London resembles the face rather of Mount Etna, the court of Vulcan Stromboli, or the suburbs of hell, than an assembly of rational creatures and the imperial seat of our incomparable monarch." (28:00, Holly quoting Evelyn)

• Describes damage to health, property, and food production; cites contemporary physicians blaming coal smoke for lung diseases like “consumption” (tuberculosis).

  "It is this horrid smoke which... corrupts the waters so, as the very rain and refreshing dews which fall... precipitate this impure vapor, which, with its black and tenacious quality spots and contaminates whatsoever is exposed to it." (28:35)

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5. Proposed Remedies in Fumifugium

(29:42–35:13)

Recommendations

• Switch to Wood: Advocates for widespread planting and harvesting of trees near the city to create a sustainable wood supply for cleaner-burning fuel.
  • Later expanded in Evelyn’s Silva (1664), an early work on forestry and conservation.
• Relocate Polluting Trades: Move major polluting industries like brewers and soap boilers 5–6 miles from the city (territory now within modern London).

  "He proposes that they be moved five or six miles away below the Thames, so the smoke will not be an issue for the residents of London." (31:00)

• Create Greenbelts: Transform low grounds into fields and gardens filled with fragrant plants (sweetbriar, jasmine, lavender, rosemary, hops, etc.) to perfume the air and counteract bad odors.

  "He thought that if fields like this were planted all around London, then the wind would perpetually be bringing good smells into the city." (33:55)

• Ban Urban Burials: Move graveyards out of central London to improve air further (later wrote about garden cemeteries for green space).
• Move Odorous Businesses: Relocate butchers, fishmongers, and tallow candlemakers further out (but not as far as major polluters).

Visionary but Limited

• Did not consider the impact on residents of areas targeted for industrial relocation.
• Presciently warned about fire risk from concentrated industries in the city—a concern realized in the Great Fire of London five years later.

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6. The Fate and Legacy of Fumifugium

(35:13–36:56)

• Initially received some consideration from Charles II but none of Evelyn’s proposals were enacted.

• Evelyn’s government commissions proved difficult, costly, and draining.

• Fumifugium was reprinted several times over following centuries—during new pollution crises or in debates over regulation (1772, 1930, 1961, etc.), cementing its status as an early environmental classic.

  "Fumafugiam has been reprinted at other points in the years since then... in 1930, during debates over a potential new power station..." (36:24)

• Air quality in London improved only centuries later, after major pollution events and significant regulatory change.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of London’s pollution:

  “Where it once enters, there can nothing remain long in its native splendor and perfection.” (25:58, Evelyn to King Charles II)

• On city life:

  “The city of London resembles the face rather of Mount Etna, the court of Vulcan Stromboli, or the suburbs of hell...” (28:00, Holly as Evelyn)

• On health impacts:

  “Endangering as well the health of your subjects as it sullies the glory of this, your imperial seat.” (26:32, Evelyn’s warning)

• On missed opportunity:

  “For a couple of days he discussed it at various meals and events, but none of Evelyn’s proposals were ultimately adopted...” (35:13, Holly)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:29 – Tracy relates Evelyn’s work to modern EPA policy
• 04:29–13:42 – Biography and works of John Evelyn
• 17:24 – Setting the stage: history of fuel and air quality in London
• 22:28 – The origins and objectives of Fumifugium
• 24:07 – Interpretation as political allegory
• 25:27–29:42 – Reading and analysis of memorable passage from Fumifugium
• 29:42–35:13 – Discussion of Evelyn’s proposed remedies
• 36:56 – Reprintings and legacy of Fumifugium

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Language & Tone

The episode maintains a conversational, enthusiastic, and historically curious tone, with Tracy and Holly weaving direct quotations, witty asides, and scholarly context.

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Final Thoughts

The episode underscores how air pollution and the politics of public health have deep historical roots. John Evelyn emerges as a visionary and a forerunner of modern environmentalism, even if his more fragrant, leafy vision for London remained unfulfilled in his lifetime. The treatise Fumifugium stands as a testament to centuries-long debates over how to keep cities clean, beautiful, and healthy—debates which continue to this day.

Transcript

[Tracy V. Wilson]

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[Holly Frey]

Welcome to Stuff youf Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartradio.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

[Holly Frey]

And I'm Holly Fr.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

While I was working on our episode on Rickets, I stumbled across a reference to a work I had never heard of before by someone I do know about, but in a different context, and that was Fumafugium. We're just. That's how we're gonna Say it. Fumafoogium. Who knows how he wanted it to be pronounced? That was written by John Evelyn in 1661. And I knew of John Evelyn mostly as a diarist. He comes up a lot alongside his contemporary and fellow diarist, Samuel Pepys. We've covered Samuel Pepys on the show before. Fumifugium was a treatise on air pollution, and it was mentioned in the Ricketts research because of the possible role of air pollution in an apparent rise in rickets in the 17th century. In that moment, I kind of thought, wow, John Evelyn wrote a treatise on air pollution? I had no idea. Fascinating. And then I just mentally moved on, got back to my work. But the day that I finished the Ricketts outline, news broke that in the US the Environmental Protection Agency is going to stop factoring the economic cost of harm to human health into decisions about air pollution regulations. A spokesperson from the agency said that they are still considering health impacts, but that there won't be a monetary estimate because those numbers are too uncertain. Okay, but like, you can't really include the impact on human health in a cost benefit analysis if you're not estimating the cost. Also, this administration has been pretty straightforwardly hostile to things like conservation and green energy. So when I heard that, I immediately went back to Fumafugium and the fact that people have been talking about the harms of air pollution for hundreds of years.

[Holly Frey]

So we're going to start this episode by looking at John Evelyn's biography. He was born In Surrey on October 31, 1620, the fourth surviving child born to Richard and Eleanor Comer Evelyn. The Eveland family held the patent on the manufacture of gunpowder, which traced back to John's great grandfather, who had brought the manufacture of gunpowder to England.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The family lived at Wotten House, which was on a 700 acre estate. This is a hotel, conference center and wedding venue today. To give you a sense of the scale, Richard had an income of about 4,000 pounds a year. In other words, this was a wealthy family, although since he was the second son, John was not expected to inherit much of this.

[Holly Frey]

When he was about 5, John was sent to be raised by his maternal grandparents. From a very young age, he liked to draw and to sketch, and he started keeping a diary at the age of 11. He may have started this diary by writing his notes in an almanac. He reformatted his entries later on, and at first he included both personal reflections and historic and newsworthy events. But eventually his diary would focus almost entirely on the latter.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

John's Sister Elizabeth died in 1634 at the age of about 20, and then his mother died a year later of what he described as excessive remorse over the deaths of Elizabeth and of other siblings who had died when they were babies. John was only 15 when his mother died in 1637.

[Holly Frey]

John and two brothers went to the Middle Temple, one of the four Inns of Court of England and Wales, where people went to study law and be called to the bar. This was really more about social connections than law study, though.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

That same year he was admitted to Balliol College, Oxford. He left this college without finishing a degree that was not uncommon for men of his station in the 17th century. He also didn't feel like he was prepared for college, though, both because he did not think his earlier education at a free school had been very good and because he had not really applied himself to it.

[Holly Frey]

In 1640, when John was 20, his father died and at that point his older brother inherited Wootenhau. The following year, Evelyn traveled to the continent, touring Holland and Belgium and very briefly volunteering for military service before returning to England.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

After years of conflict between King Charles the First and Parliament, a civil war started in 1642 with Royalists fighting against Parliamentarians, and this put Evelyn in a difficult position. He was unquestionably a royalist, but wooden house was in territory controlled by the Parliamentarians. Evelyn decided to return to the Continent rather than becoming involved in the war on the Royalist side. That would have risked the confiscation of the family estate by the Parliamentarians.

[Holly Frey]

Evelyn spent about four years on a grand tour of France and Italy, traveling and learning about art and architecture. Then in 1647, he married Mary Brown, whose father was Charles I's ambassador to Paris. Although Mary was English, she had spent almost all of her life in France. Her exact birth year is unclear, but she was still in her early to mid teens and Evelyn was 26. They do not seem to have lived together until about three years after the wedding. Though she is described as Evelyn's intellectual equal and as being very kind and sweet, she also put a lot more effort and care into the education of their children, who than John had experienced himself.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

King Charles I was executed in 1649 and his son Charles II fled to France in 1651. That effectively ended the Civil War. Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. John Evelyn's loyalties were not changed at this point, and his wife's family were also royalists. But now that the war was over, he thought it was time to return to England. He and Mary traveled separately and both of them arrived in 1652. Evelyn never left England after this.

[Holly Frey]

John and Mary lived at Sayes Court, Deptford, which had been occupied by Mary's family for generations, although since it had been confiscated by the parliamentarians, Evelyn had to do a lot of work to secure the lease to it. The first of their eight children was born in 1652. Although only four of those children lived to adulthood and only one of them.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Outlived John and Mary, the 1650s were difficult for Evelyn. He was a royalist and publishing Royalist tracts, and England no longer had a monarch. The loss of three of his children over the course of just a few years was also devastating for the whole family. Also, while John and Mary both had affluent upbringings, their life together was on a much smaller budget. Since John was the second son and had not inherited most of the family's wealth, they were not poor by any means. This was more like they had to be really selective about which luxuries they could afford.

[Holly Frey]

Evelyn put some of his efforts into starting a garden at say's court, one that he aspired to turn into a paradise on earth. This sparked a greater interest in botany and garden design, and he would eventually go on to design gardens for his friends.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

He also did a lot of writing, including scientific writing. He translated the first book of Lucretius Didactic poem De Rerum Natura, into English verse with a commentary in 1656. This book, which is composed as a hymn, lays out the basics of the universe as composed of atoms. Evelyn was connected to a lot of the people who had established the Royal Society, and he became a member of that society once it was established in 1661. That's also the year he wrote Fumafugiam, which we'll be talking more about in a bit.

[Holly Frey]

Evelyn wrote about 30 books over the course of his life, and several of them were focused on conservation and the natural world. Sometimes he's described as England's first environmentalist. Silva, or A Discourse of Forest Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty's Dominions, was published in 1664, and it's one of the earliest published works on tree conservation and forestry. Soil, a philosophical discourse of Earth Relating to the culture and improvement of it for vegetation and the Propagation of Plants, came out in 1676. Later editions of that book used the title Terra rather than Soil.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Other works over the course of Evelyn's life included a book on etching and engraving called Sculptura, a book on metals called Numismata, and a Discourse on Salads, that is of course, about Salads. He also wrote a biography of Margaret Godolphin, who was a maid of honor at court. Of course, after the monarchy had been re established. Evelyn's relationship with her has been framed as paternal and mentoring, but also as kind of an emotionally very intense friendship bordering on an affair, possibly manipulative on Evelyn's part. Margaret secretly married Sidney Godolphin in 1676 and died in childbirth two years later. And it's after that that Evelyn wrote this biography.

[Holly Frey]

Although Evelyn did not really care for court or public life after the restoration of Charles II in 1660, he did serve on a series of commissions and councils which continue during the reign of James VII and second, these included the Commission to rebuild London after the great fire of 1666 and the council of Foreign Plantations, which governed England's slave plantations in the colonies. King James also named Evelyn one of the commissioners of the Privy Seal.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Evelyn also served on the commission for Sick and wounded Mariners and Prisoners of War during the Dutch wars of the 1660s and 70s. This is probably when he became friends with Samuel Pepys. Samuel Pepys was working with the Navy at that point. In our episode about Samuel Pepys, which will run as a Saturday classic soon, we said that Pepys just found everything in the world around him really interesting and worth knowing about. And this was really true of Evelyn as well.

[Holly Frey]

In 1691, Evelyn inherited Wittenhouse. After the death of his older brother's last surviving son. He moved there with his wife in 1694. Evelyn died in London on February 3, 1706, at the age of 85.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Most of Evelyn's works were published posthumously, including his diary, which was published for the first time in 1818. He also left behind a ton of correspondence in addition to his more formal books and writings. An archive of his personal papers is in the British Library today. Although much of his personal library, which numbered more than 3,000 volumes, was broken up and sold at auction in the 1970s.

[Holly Frey]

Let's take a quick sponsor break and then we will talk about Fumifugium.

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In the middle of the night, Saskia awoke in a haze. Her husband Mike was on his laptop. What was on his screen would change Saskia's life forever.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

When you look at your car, you're.

[Holly Frey]

Going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.

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Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused.

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[Tracy V. Wilson]

To set the stage for our discussion of John Evelyn's fumafugium, we need to talk about coal. Historically, people in Britain have burned a range of materials for heat and fuel, including peat, dried dung, wood, and charcoal, which is made with wood and other organic materials. In London in particular, the main sources of fuel for centuries were wood and charcoal. Which most people just called coal. Generally speaking, people did not find wood smoke to be all that unpleasant, and charcoal didn't produce a lot of smoke when it burned.

[Holly Frey]

The Romans mined and used bituminous coal in Britain. But after the end of the Roman Empire, the most coal mining there stopped. Then, around the 12th century, people started extracting coal from along the River Tyne, in Newcastle, and from cliffs around the coasts of Northumberland and South Wales. It's possible that this coastal location is the source of the term sea coal, although there's also speculation that it's a reference to coal that was washed ashore or exposed by erosion, or that the name came from the coal being transported by sea. Whatever it may be, the term sea coal differentiated bituminous coal from charcoal.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Generally speaking, coal produces more heavier smoke than wood or charcoal, and the coal that was being burned at this time also probably contained a lot more sulfur than what's in use today. That made its smoke even more unpleasant. Even so, some industries started adopting coal as a fuel source in the 13th century, especially brewers and metalsmiths. And some people also started using coal to heat their homes. One reason for this was that centuries of wood and charcoal use as fuel had led to deforestation, so wood was becoming harder to get and more expensive. Blacksmiths also used bellows to make their fires hotter, and coal did not spark as much as other fuels did when they did this.

[Holly Frey]

Since the smoke from wood and charcoal had not been perceived as all that noxious, people hadn't built many tall chimneys to try to carry it farther away from the ground before it was released into the air. That compounded air quality problems. When people started burning more coal, there.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Was just a lot more coal smoke, a lot closer to the ground than there would have been had it been sent up a chimney first. In the 13th century, parliament started making various efforts to regulate the industrial use of coal, especially from breweries. Edward I prohibited the burning of sea coal in 1306. People kept burning coal in spite of that ban, though, the burning of coal.

[Holly Frey]

In Britain declined over the latter half of the 14th century. But that wasn't because of objections to the smoke. It was because so many people died during the Black Death. The dramatic drop in population and corresponding drop in demand for fuel also meant that over the next decades, Britain's forests started to regrow.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

But then, during the 15th and 16th centuries, a combination of factors led to more widespread coal use. Another was another wave of deforestation, as Britain's population and fuel use started growing again. Another is the Little Ice Age and the need to burn more fuel to stay warm because it was colder and wetter. And a third is that a lot of England's roads connecting the forests to city like London were in really terrible condition. And that was only getting worse over time. Moving wood into the cities was increasingly difficult and expensive.

[Holly Frey]

England's towns and cities, especially London, became progressively dirtier and more polluted, leading Parliament and a series of monarchs to once again attempt to regulate the burning of coal. For the most part, this was not about the idea of public health or coal smoke being bad for people in general. It was about the health of the monarch and their family and what the monarch found unpleasant or distasteful. For example, under Queen Elizabeth the First, in 1578, the burning of coal was banned in London, but only when Parliament was in session.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Then in 1603, James VI of Scotland was crowned as James I of England and Ireland. Coal was more widely used in Scotland and its acceptance by the crown and use in the royal household helped pave the way for its use elsewhere in England. More industries started using coal as fuel at the same time. Brewers in particular were still seen as polluting the air with all of their coal smoke. And there were ongoing efforts to either regulate brewers use of coal or to move the breweries out of London in the first part of the 17th century.

[Holly Frey]

Soon London was burning more coal than probably any other city in Europe. And that brings us to John Evelyn's Fumifugium, written in 1661. Evelyn started on this very shortly after the restoration of Charles II in 1660. As we've already said, Evelyn didn't really like court or public life. He much preferred to work in his garden and read and write about things that interested him. I feel you Evelyn. But he also had high hopes for what life would be like now that England had a king again. Evelyn thought he might be able to encourage the King to pursue things that would improve England as a nation.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Evelyn also hoped this would help him secure some kind of royal appointment, one that would let him do good work and, and to be paid for it. And he hoped to find a place at court for his wife. It's a little unclear how much Mary may have wanted this for herself, but she had grown up in France in much more affluent circumstances than what she had in England. She definitely did have friends among the English nobility and the elite.

[Holly Frey]

Fumafugium, which the King commissioned, was connected to all of this. Evelyn hoped to both impress the King and encourage him to do something about the problem of coal smoke in London. And he thought that if the King put these recommendations into action, the results would reflect well on the monarch and elevate him in the eyes of his subjects. The issue of air pollution was also a natural fit for this, given Charles II's focus on beauty and decorum at his court.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

An article by Mark Jenner of the University of York argues that Fumafoogium was also written partly as a political allegory. On one level, it was definitely about the issue of air pollution and coal smoke. Like John, Evelyn thought it was a way to maybe help the problem get taken care of while also making the King look really good by taking care of that problem. But Evelyn might also have meant it at least somewhat symbolically, with the removal of all the coal pollution in London serving as a stand in for the removal of corruption and unwanted politics from the British government.

[Holly Frey]

Of course, people had been writing about smoke, bad smells, air pollution and the industrial burning of coal for centuries. But Fumafugiam is seen as the first serious work devoted to air pollution. It's only about 24 pages long and its full title is Fubafugium, or the Inconvenience of the Air and Smoke of London Dissipated, together with some remedies humbly proposed by J.E. esquire to his sacred Majesty and to the Parliament now assembled. Its title page includes a Latin epigraph from Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, which translates approximately as how easily the heavy smoke of coal seeps into the brain.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

This pamphlet starts with a letter addressed to the King. Evelyn describes walking in the palace at Whitehall and seeing smoke coming from tunnels near Northumberland House. He says this smoke had invaded the court, quote, that all the rooms, galleries and places about it were filled and infested with it, and that to such a degree as men could hardly discern one another for the cloud, and none could support without manifest inconveniency.

[Holly Frey]

He describes this cloud as a threat to the King's health and goes on to say, quote, your Majesty, who is a lover of noble buildings, gardens, pictures and all royal magnificences, must desire to be freed from this prodigious annoyance, and which is so great an enemy to their luster and beauty, that where it once enters, there can nothing remain long in its native splendor and perfection. He says the King's sister, Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orleans, had also complained of the effects of the smoke in her breast and her lungs.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Having established the effects of the smoke on the King and his family, Evelyn goes on to say, quote, evil is so epidemical endangering as well the health of your subjects as it sullies the glory of this, your imperial seat.

[Holly Frey]

Next was a note to the reader in which Evelyn says he has been, quote, frequently displeased at the small advance and improvement of public works in this nation, wherein it seems to be much inferior to the countries and kingdoms which are round about it, especially during these late years of our sad confusions. But now that God has miraculously restored to us our prince, a prince of so magnanimous and public a spirit, we may promise ourselves not only a recovery of our former splendor, but also whatever any of our neighbors enjoy, of more universal benefit for health or ornament, in sum, whatever may do honor to a nation so perfectly capable of all advantages.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The text itself starts by discussing the importance of air, noting that philosophers had named the air as the window to the soul. He walks through what he sees as some of the finest qualities of London, like its position on good ground, with good soil, with the River Thames allowing goods to be brought in from the sea and the land, and, when untainted by smoke, a sweet and wholesome air.

[Holly Frey]

He describes the culinary fires kept in people's homes as not responsible for the problems of coal smoke, but instead blames them on the industrial fires of, quote, brewers, dyers, lime burners, salt and soap boilers, and some other private trades. He goes on to say, quote, while these are belching it forth their sooty jaws, the city of London resembles the face rather of Mount Etna, the court of Vulcan Stromboli, or the suburbs of hell, than an assembly of rational creatures and the imperial feet of our incomparable monarch.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Later he writes, quote, it is this horrid smoke which obscures our churches and makes our palaces look old, which fouls our clothes and corrupts the waters so, as the very rain and refreshing dews which fall in the several seasons precipitate this impure vapor, which, with its black and tenacious quality spots and contaminates whatsoever is exposed to it.

[Holly Frey]

He goes on to describe the evils of this smoke, like yellowing pictures and hangings, ruining clothes that are left out to dry, killing bees and flowers and gardens, and making fruit taste bitter when fruit can grow at all, and its effects on the body, the lungs and larynx and throat and voice. He cites an expert physician as saying, coal smoke causes consumption, phthisis and indisposition of the lungs. Consumption and phthisis both mean tuberculosis, which is caused by bacteria, something that was not known at the time. But tuberculosis and other lung conditions like asthma, are definitely affected by air pollution.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

The second part of this pamphlet offers remedies for these issues and we will get to that after a sponsor break. The second part of John Evelyn's Mummofugium offers solutions for London's smoke problems. He notes that there are not many materials that, quote, burn clear and that supplying the entire city of London with wood is just not possible. He does argue that it is possible for London to be supplied with a lot more wood and at better prices by more actively planting forests and then harvesting the wood after those trees mature and then continuing those plantings to keep the cycle going.

[Holly Frey]

This has some overlap with what he would later write in his book Silva, which we mentioned earlier. Among other things, Silva recommends a prohibition on the cutting of trees more than 1 foot square within 22 miles of London and encourages the intentional planting of seedlings on estates. This was both to beautify the country and provide the benefits of trees and shade and to ensure that there was an ongoing supply of wood for burning fuel and other uses.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Fomaflugium also recommends the removal of trades that were the biggest nuisances to the heir of the city, like the brewers and the soap boilers and all those other ones that he listed off. He proposes that they be moved five or six miles away below the Thames, so the smoke will not be an issue for the residents of London.

[Holly Frey]

While this definitely would have improved air quality in London, he does not really engage with what it would mean for the people already living in the areas that these industries would theoretically be moved to. He does, however, speculate that cold air rising from the surrounding marshes and fens and would mix with the smoke and render it less noxious. Also, just as a note, the areas he was talking about are all considered parts of London today.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, like he. It sort of makes it sound like he's going to send them way, far, far into the country, but that it is, all of it is really London now.

[Holly Frey]

Now, those are just neighborhoods.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. From there, Evelyn argues that this move would provide jobs, since watermen would be needed to move all those goods that were made by all those industries back into London. And he says that it would help protect London from fire, something that seems almost prophetic given the devastation of the Great Fire of London, which took place five years after he wrote this. He notes that laws could be passed to accomplish this and that there had been such laws previously. He quotes the full text of one that was passed during the reign of King James I.

[Holly Frey]

And sixth, he also touches on other steps that could make the heir of London more wholesome. Beyond the issue of coal smoke. This includes prohibiting burials within the city. Over the course of his life, Evelyn also wrote other work that advocated for the establishment of garden cemeteries to act as both burial places for the dead and as beautifying public green space.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

In this work, Evelyn also advocates for moving some of the stinkier occupations out of the city, although not as far away as what he proposed for the coal burners. That included people like butchers, fishmongers, and candle makers who were making their candles primarily from beef tallow.

[Holly Frey]

In Fumafujium's third section, Evelyn calls for all the low grounds around London to be planted in fields of 20, 30, or 40 acres or more. These would be separated and enclosed by fences or palisades, and planted not much unlike to what His Majesty has already begun, by the wall from old spring garden to St. James's in that park they would be elegantly arranged and diligently kept and supplied with such shrubs as yield the most fragrant and odoriferous flowers and are apt to tinge the air upon every gentle emission at a great distance.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

We already talked about how he loved gardening and botany, and this is where he used that knowledge to list off a number of possible plants. They included sweetbriar, white and yellow jasmine, bay juniper, lavender, rosemary, and hops. And then in the spaces between those fences and palisades, he recommends planting beds of flowers, including carnations, violets and cowslips, lilies, narcissus, and strawberries. He thought that if fields like this were planted all around London, then the wind would perpetually be bringing good smells into the city. And then in the wintertime, branches and blossoms that had been pruned or picked from the plants could be burned for their fragrance.

[Holly Frey]

These horticultural improvements may have been inspired by Evelyn's friend John Beale, who had made some similar proposals a few years before. Biel had written a series of letters about these ideas to Samuel Hartlib, who was also a member of the Royal Society, and Hartlib had passed those on to Evelyn.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Fubafujium ends quote and this is what I, in short, had to offer for the improvement and melioration of the air about London, and with which I shall conclude this discourse.

[Holly Frey]

Evelyn delivered this proposal to the king, and at first it seemed like Charles might have some interest in pursuing it. For a couple of days he discussed it at various meals and events, but none of Evelyn's proposals were ultimately adopted, and while he was appointed to various commissions, this did not lead to the kind of work that Evelyn had hoped to be doing, or the kind of income he hoped to earn from it. In particular, his role on the commission for sick and wounded mariners and prisoners of war was really hard work and it was personally expensive and and it involved his being exposed to illnesses, including the plague.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

However, Fomafujium went on to have a life of its own that extended beyond Evelyn's lifetime. It was reprinted several times during the 18th century in response to rising rates of pollution and efforts to mitigate it. One of those reprintings was in 1772 by Samuel Pegg the Younger. In his preface, Pegg wrote, quote, we may observe how much the evil is increased. Since the time this treatise was written.

[Holly Frey]

Fumafugiam has been reprinted at other points in the years since then. For example, in 1930, during debates over a potential new power station being built in Chelsea, the Royal Society reprinted it in accordance with a general desire reported in the Thames for November 29, 1929, when an extension of power stations emitting presumptuous smoke in London was under discussion. In 1961 it was reprinted by the National Society for Clean Air.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, obviously the air of London is much cleaner than it was in the 17th century, but it continued to be really like very polluted for a long time. We have episodes about some of the more modern events that were tied to the levels of air pollution, like the Great London Smog is I think the most memorable one when the atmospheric conditions led to a low lying fog and smog layer that people literally could not see through. Yuck. No thanks.

[Holly Frey]

Do you have listener mail that is hopefully not so coated with smog you can't see it?

[Tracy V. Wilson]

I do have listener mail. It's from Caitlin. Caitlin sends us the greatest emails. Caitlin wrote Dear Tracy and Holly, I've written in many times over the years with anecdotes, connections or further details on various episodes, and the disability stories always resonate deeply. I'm working on my PhD with a very historical focus on some aspects of disability studies, so most of this episode was familiar ground. That episode was the one that was about the 504 sit ins from a couple of weeks ago, but I cannot imagine the reach of this podcast when I lecture my 60 students on 504 ADA and other milestones in the American disability rights movement each semester. It stays pretty local to those students. Thank you for bringing this topic to more people who might not have had the chance to learn about this in school. I thought some etymology might be interesting for y'. All. Why do we say disabled and when did we stop saying handicapped. The short answer is disabled people asked us to, but the long answer has more nuance. Handicap was actually a self identifier used by disabled people as an alternative to crippled, which had and has pejorative connotations of pity and shame attached. Handicap comes from sports where handicap style bets would be used to try to compensate for horses or athletes having different sexual skill levels. The betters would each offer a wager of what they thought the particular advantage should be. So better one thinks Seabiscuit should start three lengths ahead of Commodore, and better two thinks Seabiscuit should start one length ahead. A neutral arbiter would decide which of those offers was most fair, and the parties could either agree and make a bet or take their hand out of the cap. This process quickly became metaphorical rather than using an actual cap. So for a person seeking another way to describe their position in the world, the idea of a handicap which acknowledged and tried to account for a disadvantaged starting line, was far superior to that of being crippled. Randolph Bourne, who would be an excellent future episode, was one of the first to use the term in writing in 1911 in his essay A Philosophy of Handicap and also published the Handicapped by one of them. It was the preferred self identifier for other groups as well, including the League of the Physically Handicapped, who lobbied for equal employment assistance under the New Deal. In roughly the generation of Judy Heumann, Kitty Cohn, and Brad Lomax, disabled people began to express frustration and disdain for handicapped. The reason why varied from person to person, but one notion was that it reinforced the idea that disability could be negated or rehabilitated, rather than disability being an important and permanent part of a person's identity. This got longer than I meant to cons of writing about a topic I just finished pre dissertation work on. Thank you again for your consistent dedication to showcasing the history of every kind of person in every kind of place and every kind of time. It has changed the way I think about the world. Best Caitlin P S. Here are some pictures of my two cats, Sharky Tortie and Dimitri Orange, enjoying the sunbeams that light our living room each afternoon. These cats are always so precious. We have three cat pictures all featuring sunbeams. So good. So I love Caitlin's emails. They send us great emails, many of them on these topics. I wanted to read this one in particular because I noticed that language shift in the 504 research. I noticed that there were people in that disabled activists, specifically in the 504 episode, who were using the term handicapped to describe themselves and that also there were people using the word disabled. And disabled seemed to be slightly more common in the research in terms of like the first person quotes. It was a little bit surprising to me, mostly because I am a little bit younger than like Judy Heumann and Brad Lomax and Kitty Cohn. But my mom worked with disabled people for a lot of her career, and I was seeing the term handicapped in a lot of what she was doing, you know, a couple of decades after the 504 sit ins took place. I was a little bit surprised at how early the word disabled and disability was in, like the common use of the people who were actually disability activists at that time. I also think this is such a good email in terms of how language works for a lot of groups and their lot of self advocacy. And we have talked about that before in other contexts like the civil rights movement and whether the preferred term has been black or before that, African American or before that, Negro. And a lot of those have been self identifiers that people adopted because it felt better and more reflective of their self and goals than earlier terminology. But then eventually, for various reasons, a different word becomes the preferred word. And that is normal. And no one needs to have a panic about it.

[Holly Frey]

Right.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

And act like it is the biggest burden in the world to update your language use because someone has asked you to.

[Holly Frey]

I'm super glad this came up because I don't know if you caught it. I caught it and like, my brain didn't register it. And then like a week later my brain went, hey, that thing you were thinking, this is what happened when we did behind the scenes. I referred to a parking space as a handicapped parking space. And I occurred to me later and I was like, I hope nobody thought I was being a jerk there. But that's one of those things that you and I grew up with them being always called that. And like, it's almost hardwired saying that on the sign.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Holly Frey]

But my brain just took like 10 days to do the math on it and be like, you gotta upgrade.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. And today that would more often be like the accessible parking spot.

[Holly Frey]

Yeah. The accessible bathroom did not even register to me. So. Not intentionally thoughtless, but thoughtless just the same.

[Tracy V. Wilson]

Yeah. So thank you again, Kaitlyn. You've sent us so many great emails. I genuinely love them every time I get one. If you would like to send us a note about this or any other podcast or history [e-mail] and you can subscribe to the show on the iheartradio app or anywhere else you like to get your podcasts. Stuff youf Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.