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
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