Roman Toilets Spread Parasites
bump
...no toilet paper.
In before they decide that modern sanitary practices cause Global Warming...
Anyways, it makes sense that you didn’t have 100% of the population completely healthy and vermin free. For all of the wonders and modern infrastructure that Rome brought to these regions, you still had basic, near Neolithic standards of living all around.
It did however raise the quality of life for many above caveman standards and set a precedent for modern civilization to admire and follow. The Romans were undeniably brilliant engineers.
Love these posts. Stop making me think a 4AM in the morning - lol!
Sure, they had worms, but they weren’t dead from cholera.
“What have the Romans done for us?”
The toilet was invented in Africa. But 1000 years later, the Romans invented the hole.
Closing statement of original article:
“It seems likely that while Roman sanitation may not have made people any healthier, they would probably have smelt better.”
I had come to the same conclusion half way through.
As to the parasites, you can show a traveling or slave barbarbian the baths and public toilets but that doesn’t mean they will use them consistently and drop their ingrained cultural training.
Back in the early 70’s in cosmopolitan Manhattan our design engineering firm occupied several floors in mid-town. For a period of several weeks evidence of an unassimilated phantom appeared in the toilet stalls, the toilet seats an apparent mystery to the user. Among the stains on the seat were footprints.
Eventually a newly hired Pakistani engineer was revealed to be the culprit. University educated, he nevertheless reverted to his native unhygenic practices. He was terminated soon after. He asked for the cause of termination. The answer became a classic catch phrase, “.... Because you’re a shitty engineer.”
Part of the problem was probably the so-called clean drinking water.
Memo to time travelers: boil water before drinking in most time-places you visit.
Good thing they had a warm climate. Sitting bare on a cold stone slab wouldn’t be too pleasant.
“However, new archaeological research has revealed that—for all their apparently hygienic innovations—intestinal parasites such as whipworm, roundworm and Entamoeba histolytica dysentery did not decrease as expected in Roman times compared with the preceding Iron Age, they gradually increased.”
Perhaps not, but Roman sanitation was the ONLY REASON they could pack so many people into their cities back then. Cholera and other parasites would have prevented (and probably did prevent) all other cultures from coming close to matching what they did.
But cool article anyway. Thanks for posting!
Whenever people bunched up in towns and cities, there tended to be a big increase in disease and parasite sharing.
The Roman sanitation and water supply kept it better than it would have been otherwise, enabling the world’s first city that exceeded a million people.
Almost looks like the toilets at Jordan Hare Stadium a few years back.
Friend of mine had to dump and every single one of the toilets in that stadium didn’t have a door. He got a lot of looks LOL!
Considering the size of Roman cities - pretty remarkable.
Easy enough to have decent sanitation in a small Viking village...
And now, everywhere, mothers of young tykes are rethinking - is it really necessary to go through the ordeal of getting little Johnny to take his bath tonight? Then makes the decision: What difference, at this point, does it make? I’m too tired and need some sleep.
Who left the seat up?
The parasites are from not cooking foods thoroughly. Crapping in a toilet or in the dirt isn’t gonna change that. The damned parasites neither prove nor disprove anything.
I do wonder about the baths, though. No chlorine. How often was that bath water changed during the day? Seems to me that public baths in that era served as no more than petri dishes.
Warm water, oils and other nutrients from skin and such like... mix in masses of bacteria from hordes of bathers...
http://www.impetigopictures.org
>>Mitchell also found that, despite their famous culture of regular bathing, ‘ectoparasites’ such as lice and fleas were just as widespread among Romans as in Viking and medieval populations, where bathing was not widely practiced.<<
Nit picking wasn’t invented yet?
