Human parasites in the Roman World: health consequences of conquering an empire
cambridge.org
cambridge.org
I would think that the communal nature of the latrines and baths would actually have contributed to increasing the incidence of those parasites, rather than decreasing them.
If you compare rural living to urban living, then maybe you could say latrines and baths contributed to increase in parasites.
However that's a bad comparison.
What would be better is compare similar levels of urbanization (population density) with and without latrines & baths. I imagine the latter may be more sanitary.
In Roman times, public latrines were places of last resort. They were typically enclosed, poorly ventilated, and notorious for rats and explosions[1]. For most Romans, making it home to your own commode was vastly preferred.
This brings us to a funny quirk of roman home design. Toilets were usually located in kitchens and "flushed" with wastewater from the kitchen. In most homes these toilets were connected to cesspits that were periodically emptied, and not to the sewers.
[1]https://www.ancient-origins.net/ancient-places-europe/rats-e...
This was a fascinating read, thanks!
For anyone curious of why public latrines exploded:
> Even worse, these public latrines were notorious for terrifying customers when flames exploded from their seat openings. These were caused by gas explosions of hydrogen sulphide (H2S) and methane (CH4) that were rank as well as frightening.
Barns explode sometimes, if the hay is too green, and hasn't finished off-gassing. Luckily female gonads are internal, otherwise I might not be here.
Makes sense. So how do you know?
less != none
There are of course plenty of published papers and research. Just way less exposure in popular history
such as?
Athens: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272501188_Drainage_...
Pergamon: https://www.dainst.blog/transpergmikro/new-insights-and-ques... (42 km pipeline)
Syracuse and others https://www.sci-hub.wf/10.2307/3102954
It boggles my mind that Indus valley civilization had flush toilets. That would be roughly 3000~2600 B.C. Its both sad and ironic in the context of some of the poorly serviced parts of India (sanitarily speaking).
Regression is real. We should not forget that when confronted with the level of nonsense threatening the very fabric of our social cohesion and societal model in recent years.
Was being conservative. It was still thousands, if we must go that road e.g. the Minoans had sewage and water supply systems (IIRC earliest evidence is from 1900-1700 BC, so I guess India "wins" this one...)
You must be joking.
I am not saying the Romans were the first, but surely we can do better than “of course there were others, but we don’t know”.
About what? Are there any surviving pre-Roman architectural manuals or treatises? Or other significant sources? (not rhetorical questions, I'm not a professional historian and might be missing something and in any case it would be very interesting to read about them).
> we don’t know
We (well not we... usually only enthusiasts/people working in the area) do of course know a lot. Just quite a bit less than about the Romans. What matters the most here is that Greek/etc. plumbing/sanitary practices have very little exposure in popular history.
Aesop (or Socraters) goes to the public baths. He takes off his clothes, enters the water, rubs himself, etc, then comes out and says to the official: "that was great. Now, were do I go to get cleaned?".
Greeks had public baths, like the Romans and they were probably as filthy as those of the Romans. I've also seen plenty of archeological evidence of plumbing and sewage in various museums around Athens. IIRC there is a section of the floor in the Akropolis Museum covered by glass so one can see the underlying archeological layers, including the terracotta pipes used to carry water. These may have been from Roman times though, I can't say I remember.
(Theories those pipes carried steam for ancient Greek robots with cogwheel brains have been debunked).
> The researcher Gilbert Wiplinger put forward a theory on the use of the xylospongium and it seems much more credible. He suggests it was used for secondary cleaning of ancient lavatories in a similar form in which modern toilet brooms are used.
> The discovery of scraps of cloth in an ancient septic tank in Herculaneum led also environmental archaeologist Mark Robinson to conclude that scraps were used for wiping instead of a sponge.
Take a look at the Spa Sanitas Per Aquam conference proceedings from 2009 for more details.
I would have assumed that old fabric was a valuable resource. Used fabric is essentially rubbish now so we don't see that. Ragman or rag merchant used to be a job. Only the very wealthy would use rags that way I would guess.
Joking, maybe they did use the sponge alternatively as a bottom brush and tooth brush. Not in this order, probably :)
Concentrations of people create hygenic issues regardless. On balance, Romes latrines were probably a net benefit, though of course the Romans lacked modern understanding of disease, both in parasitic and infectious forms.
Even today, roughly 85% of the increase in human longevity, much due to decreased infant and child mortality, is attributable to general hygiene, municipal sanitation measures (both of wastes such as sewerage, solid rubbish, and of improved air quality; and of vastly improved water and food quality. Other public health measures, including quarantine, epidemiological surveillance, and vaccinations, also played a huge role. I first became aware of this through Laurie Garrett's book The Coming Plague (1994): <https://search.worldcat.org/title/30701925>
See "The Conquest of Pestilence in New York City" for a ... graphic ... expression of the trends in mortality from ~1800 through 2000 or so:
<https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uTWEATUzgxk/TXQoTibILtI/AAAAAAAAA...>
Additionally, humanity gained a broad selection of antibiotics in the same time. Infections that used to be pretty deadly (e.g. syphilis, the plague) or debilitating (meningitis, ear infections, wound infections) are easily treatable. Even extremely deadly viral infections such as HIV or mildly deadly but highly contagious ones such as SARS-CoV-2 have symptomatic and suppression treatments.
The challenge is that bacteria evolved over the last 100-ish years just as well and a wide class of antibiotics are useless against some strains (e.g. e-coli) nowadays... and what used to be "reserve antibiotics" to be used only if a human's life was in danger is routinely fed to livestock to make it grow better, with the predictable result of resistance genes evolving in the livestock and mixing said resistance genes with bacteria prevalent in humans.
The first broad-spectrum antibiotic, penicillin, wasn't discovered until 1928, wasn't administered medically until 1930, and then still experimentally, and wasn't mass produced until near or after the end of WWII, with 2.3 million doses available the invasion of Normandy (Spring 1944) and nearly 650 billion units by June 1945). General availability to the US public didn't occur until 15 March 1945.
Yet if we look at the NYC mortality graph, mortality falls tremendously during the latter part of the 19th century and attains the level it sustained through most of the 20th century by 1920, well before penicillin was even first isolated, let alone applied broadly. If you compare against the date of penicillin general availability, mortality actually rises until about 1970, after which there is a plateau, followed by a comparatively sharp decline (though minor in context with the 1850--1920 decrease) after 1990.
Antibiotics are invisible on that chart.
Romans used sponges to clean their butt in public toilets, but sponges were shared.
I guess that didn't help...
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/genes-protective-during-...