In the hot summer of 1858 the Thames, which carried all of London's sewage, began to smell so bad that Parliament, right on its bank, could barely sit. The curtains were soaked in chloride of lime. Newspapers reported the Chancellor, Benjamin Disraeli, fleeing a committee room with a handkerchief pressed to his nose. Within weeks a bill passed to pay for engineer Joseph Bazalgette's great sewers. Faraday had warned them years earlier. The words are imagined.