You know, until I learned about how people crapped on the streets of various cities, I thought that was an obsolete medieval practice. That practice helped make numerous diseases way more dangerous. Wastewater treatment effectively prevents almost all waterborne diseases, especially malaria and typhoid nowadays, and now people do the disgusting practice that spread diseases back in the old days.
I was reading a novel recently and the author described a town on a river, where your social standing was determined by how far up the river you lived. If you were rich or powerful, you got to live on the upper part of the river and get your water before everyone else had pooped in it!
It has apparently started happening in Austin.