She was the image of a woman of the people reared in the workmen's slums of great cities, anaemic from the mephitic air of the den in which she was born and from bad and insufficient food, with a wretched body, all feminine graces paralysed in their development by the rough work done in her childhood.
"The Shadow of the Cathedral"
Vicente Blasco Ibañez
A strange mephitic odor seemed to come from sodden leaves and mosses that began to ooze under their feet.
"Sally Dows and Other Stories"
Bret Harte
These philosophers consider men in their experiments no more than they do mice in an air-pump or in a recipient of mephitic gas.
"The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12)"
Edmund Burke