x-post from medieval-religion
----- Original Message -----
From: Elizabeth Whitaker <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 28, 1999 3:17 AM
Subject: Wells can be contaminated (was Re: Wine in the Bible)
> At 12:58 PM 12/27/99 -0600, Sharon Arnoult wrote:
> > The well water may well have been safer. Early modern Europeans
> >certainly were aware that while ground water (rivers and lakes) was
> >unsafe, spring water and well water were usually OK. Of course, these
>
> I've had enough geology to be aware that well water can indeed become
contaminated
> in the present day, due to proximity to such things as leaking septic
tanks and floods,
> especially in areas with very porous rock and/or porous sands. Therefore,
I feel
> I can extrapolate to cess pits in medieval times.
>
> Here in the rural Southern U.S., it's routine for household wells to be
routinely
> tested, usually by employees of the county health department.
>
> As a child in the late 1960s, I lived in a house built in the 1930s which
had a
> "spring house", an underground chamber containing a spring in which
certain
> foods were kept cool in the absence of mechanical refrigeration. (My
parents
> only used it as a point of historical interest.)
>
> >last two could become contaminated, but avoided the obvious problem
> >ground water had, i.e., that latrines, sewage, etc., had been dumped
>
> Birds and animals can drown in open wells.
>
> >into it. When I lived in Esfahan, Iran for 3 months in 1977, I got the
> >impression that cholera epidemics had been a major problem for cities on
> >rivers, like Esfahan, although thanks to vaccinations and the building
> >of modern water systems cholera was mostly a rural problem by 1977.
>
> I have not lived overseas -- I'd like to -- but I have done research on
pre-modern
> rural Southern U.S. history for years. I found that typhoid epidemics
were
> common in the mountains of the Southern U.S., supposedly
> due to local use of natural running water (streams, creeks, etc) as
latrines.
> Typhoid epidemics also followed floods which contaminated wells.
>
> Many survivors of typhoid can linger for years before dying of
complications.
> (I found this in one of the editions of the Merck Manual, a standard
medical
> reference.)
>
> I've read Horace Kephart's Our Southern Highlanders (Univ. of Tennessee
> Press, and possibly other publishers), which was originally published in
> 1912, and found many of the descriptions eerily familiar to those I've
read
> of Medieval peasantry. Incidentally, the only time he mentions daily use
of
> alcohol, if memory serves me, is when he describes an extremely isolated
> group of mountain people who suffered terribly from arthritis. (Alcohol
was
> their only relief from the pain.)
>
> Elizabeth Whitaker
> [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|