I wanna pick someone’s brain at Arkane for how they chose to make the Dunwall setting in the specific time frame it’s in
Specifically that it’s late Victorian to early Edwardian, but they’re starting to run electricity (powered by supernatural whale oil), and they very specifically and explicitly do not have anything approaching germ theory.
Clearly they have some idea that inhaling fumes is bad (see: Whalers), but I can’t find any hint that they would have miasma theory either. What DO they think causes disease? In game several people are investigating the cause of the rat plague but the closest they’ve gotten to a causative agent is “rat parts???” like not even the droppings or fluids of a rat, just “rat.”
I know that is supposed to resemble the bubonic plague, but there’s no mention of fleas on the rats we can find being studied. If the plague is closer to my personal guess that it’s some sort of turbo hantavirus, then Sokolov has no chance of figuring it out if he doesn’t know that germs are a thing.
Did the Abbey of the Everyman decide that germ theory was heresy or something and that’s why they don’t have it?
What a funny coincidence, just yesterday I was thinking about this very same topic! So I did some digging myself hehe :3
First for some visual evidence -
This ad, which we only ever see a cropped version in game of but which appears in full in The Dunwall Archives, makes me think that miasma theory is at least potentially a thing, although it’s not certain proof - one might just want to “purify the air of sick-rooms” in the sense that stinky air is gross and unpleasant and making it smell nicer is just olfactorily nicer yknow, it doesn’t have to be a “bad air is a vector for disease” thing.
Meanwhile the Dead Counters are not shown with any protection on their faces, implying that at least dead bodies are not thought of as giving off any miasma, or at least not enough to damage someone with a “vigorous constitution”.
Over in DH2 Addermire is called an “Institute of Infectious Disease” so there must at least be some understanding of infectious vs noninfectious diseases. That doesn’t count out miasma theory, though - noninfectious diseases might just be thought of as not giving off noxious fumes.
Iirc there is also mention of leech therapy somewhere but I can’t remember where it was so I can’t speak more on that.
Moving on to written notes and books (for DH1 I only looked at the ones in the WrittenNotes packages bc im lazy sorry lmao), starting with DH1 -
The book “The Rat Plague” by an unnamed natural philosopher posits that the rats “pass [the plague] readily between members of their own species, perhaps through mites”. The author can also read their blood to the point to the point where they state that “The blood of the rats tells its own story, allowing me to gauge the number of generations that a given group of rats have lived with the plague. […] The rats collected in the poorest parts of town, in the slums, exhibit the oldest strains of the plague. While those found near the docks - where the foreign, plague-bearing rats would presumably have entered our city - exhibit a younger strain of plague”. So this author knows that there is something in the blood that is at least a sign of the plague but it’s never stated outright if they think that this is just a symptom or indeed part of how the plague spreads.
“A Second Solution” by Piero Joplin calls this particular plague a “strain” - jumping over to DH2 for a second there, too, a letter from journalist to Hypatia writes of a “strain of Bloodfly Fever”, so it seems quite accepted among the scientific community that diseases grow and change and evolve. Back to Piero’s book, he says that he too has “studied [the Plague] within the blood of those so afflicted”, evidently quite intensely and in comparison with other illnesses or strains of plague as he marvels about how good this particular strain is, calling it “almost perfect”. I did find this passage about the elixirs available from him and Sokolov notable too, though - it makes it quite clear that he thinks that there is more to humans than just flesh and bone, which might have implications for how he views disease as well: “And while it is true that Piero’s Remedy and Sokolov’s Elixir are known to protect the body against the plague equally, my own has properties, not fully understood, which relate to the mind itself, and the spirit. And it is in this way that my formula wins out. Here, is where one should pay attention to this contest. For you see, Sokolov’s Elixir, with its emphasis on the brute, animal body, is a crass goo better suited for livestock. The subtle and secret variance in the key ingredients making up Piero’s Remedy ensure that it works on the higher functions that separate humankind from the mindless blue-jawed hagfish swimming in the Wrenhaven River.”
“Avoiding the Rat Plague”, “a government protocol on disease practices”, calls it the Plague a “contagion”, again showing that there is certainly knowledge of infectious vs noninfectious diseases.
A book describing proper protocols when dealing with Weeper states that “After use, strict washing procedures must be followed with regard to washing the metal kennels, transport paddocks, and the carriages used to transport the infected to one of the deportation zones” - I doubt a miasma could linger long enough that it would need to be washed away with water, so there does seem to be some understanding of disease being spread by physical substances that can stick to surfaces.
Last a letter to Galvani from the Academy says that “We’ve stayed fairly insulated from the plague, since so few come and go here”, implying that they think the plague can at least in part be spread by contact with people and not just rats.
Also, while there are plenty of mentions of sewers and their associated bad smells as well as other sources of bad smells, nobody ever seems to directly connect the two - even when describing the sewer system and the people who live in them or visit the tunnels for all sorts of purposes there was no mention of them contracting illness from how bad the place smells. But then again there was also no mention of anyone falling into the sewers and contracting a disease that way or anything.
I believe there was some talk of astrological events causing the Rat Plague too but I can’t remember where I read that or if I just made it up after having read about the Black Death (for which the best scientific theory at the time was that it was caused by a conjunction of several planets which caused a general bad miasma, as you probably know but just for any reader who doesn’t).
Now for Dishonored 2 -
The leftover journal from the time of the Rat Plague is very interesting as it says that “Everyone knows plague is carried on the winds. I will do the only sensible thing and lock myself up until the infected breezes move on”. It repeats the topic of infected winds several times, this really seeming like the accepted explanation for the author. But then this is a guy who spontaneously quarantined himself forever the second the plague broke out, so who is this a widespread idea as the author claims or just this one guy? Who knows!
One book talks of illness “due to the Inhalation of Airborne Debris” [emphasis mine] which is, I think, at least somewhat notable: this text makes it very clear that the cause of illness here is the inhalation of dust, not an inhalation of miasma or similar quasi-metaphysical bad air.
A letter from Hypatia-era patient at Addermire complains that “the Moir tanning boxes [are] now only used to treat the miners with vitamin deficiencies, developed apparently after not seeing daylight for months”, so there is also some knowledge in the population of the mechanism of vitamin D production in the human body.
A guard at Addermire writes in his journal: “When I shower with water from Addermire’s reservoirs, I don’t feel clean. It’s as if disease is in the very walls. So many sick people have come through here, for years! And not only carrying germs, but suffering maladies of the mind. Those kinds of things leave a mark on a place, even after the patients are cured or die off. And I’ve never liked doctors. They have a particular smell, and look at you like you’re just a pile of organs. I’m probably sick already, having breathed this cold, wet air for so long”. So there seems to be both a belief in germ theory with germs being mentioned by name, but also some metaphysical belief in disease leaving residual marks in places where many sick people gathered - maybe even something miasma-y, what with the “particular smell” of doctors and the “cold, wet air” of Addermire.
Finally the book I found most interesting was a book about the Rat Plague, which states: “in Serkonos, the population of disease-carrying rats was kept in check by bloodflies. […].It’s true that the plague was spread by rats, but some natural philosophers now believe that it was also carried on wind currents” [emphasis mine]. That is fascinating! This implies to me that unlike our world, where miasma theory was superceded by others around this time period, the DH world is moving towards miasma theory as the new accepted theory! Damn that’s interesting.
All in all results are completely inconclusive, this post did nothing to help, goodbye
