
The great Medieval water myth (2013) - rms
http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-great-medieval-water-myth.html
======
baldfat
Former Historical Theology Student. If this drives you nuts wait till you read
primary sources of many different historical documents and than just heard how
people corrupt history all the time.

Example Nicolaus Copernicus, was persecuted by the Catholic Church for writing
his sun centered book and arrested. The book in fact was dedicated to the
Pope. It wasn't till 73 years after the book was written that anyone said
anything against the theory. It wasn't even a theological attack but was a
difference in philosophical thought which was from Aristotle and his
opposition to mathematical physics (AKA numbers does not equal reality).

~~~
analog31
I've read a few books pertaining to the Galileo affair. It seems to be
conventional wisdom that Copernicus had permission to publish his book, and
that he was not attacked by the Church in his day.

I've also read that Galileo received favorable treatment from the Pope at
first, then things went downhill for him later.

A weird tidbit, that I can't confirm, is that Martin Luther denounced
Copernicus.

~~~
ijk
There's a record of Luther dismissing Copernicus, or at least geocentrism,
though it's from four years before _On the Revolutions of the Heavenly
Spheres_ was published:

"So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that
others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does
who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down."

But that's pretty mild for Luther. If he wasn't using scatalogical references,
his heart wasn't really in it. We only know about it because many of Luther's
casual conversations were recorded; he was literally complaining about it at
the dinner table.

~~~
mcguire
_" So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing that
others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fellow does
who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down."_

Fortunately, things are completely different in the modern world.

------
barking
Did this myth, at least partly, originate in the 1854 cholera outbreak in
London?

"There was one significant anomaly - none of the monks in the adjacent
monastery contracted cholera. Investigation showed that this was not an
anomaly, but further evidence, for they drank only beer, which they brewed
themselves. Residents near or in the brewery on Broad Street were also not
affected as a result of the fermentation of the contaminated water. The beer
was safer to drink than the dirty water from the Broad Street Pump."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak)

------
blakeja
Another old reference to drinking water over wine, Daniel 1:11-16

So Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had set over
Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, “Please test your servants for ten
days, and let them give us vegetables to eat and water to drink. “Then let our
appearance be examined before you, and the appearance of the young men who eat
the portion of the king’s delicacies; and as you see fit, so deal with your
servants.” So he consented with them in this matter, and tested them ten days.
And at the end of ten days their features appeared better and fatter in flesh
than all the young men who ate the portion of the king’s delicacies. Thus the
steward took away their portion of delicacies and the wine that they were to
drink, and gave them vegetables.

------
PeterisP
Is it just me or all the examples given in the article do, in fact, describe
drinking water instead of beer or wine as a thing that was done but was (a)
something unusual, (b) a sign of religious self-limitation ("so abstemious
that he ... drank water instead of wine") or (c) as a punishment (diet of
bread and water).

So it only supports the thesis that people in medieval times did generally
avoid drinking water to the best of their ability; it does say that the
reasons for doing so aren't so simple to avoid 'bad water'.

~~~
jere
The myth is not clearly defined at the start, but it goes that people avoided
water because alcoholic drinks were _safer_ to drink than water. What you're
hinting at is that people often prefer to drink something else for
flavor/variety/intoxication, which is just as true today. The article does
seem to debunk the myth that they were avoiding it for health reasons however.

I think this is adequately addressed in the article as well:

>Did people in the time prefer alcoholic drinks? Probably, and for the same
reason most people today drink liquids other than water: variety and flavor. A
young man in a tenth century Saxon colloquy is asked what he drinks and
answers: “Beer if I have it or water if I have no beer.” This is a clear
expression of both being comfortable with water and preferring beer.

~~~
Crito
The article debunks the idea that there was some sort of blanket fear of
water. It makes it pretty clear that when clean water was available and
recognized as clean, that people had no problem drinking it.

But I've never heard the myth that people avoided drinking even seemingly
clean water. I've always heard that many people _didn 't_ have regular access
to clean drinking water (particularly in non-Roman cities) would drink alcohol
as a safe substitute.

~~~
lione
That might possibly be the case. But then, where is any of the academic
evidence? In general or even for particular settlements? There seems to be
plenty of evidence saying that people were fine drinking water, there seems to
be a distinct lack of evidence for the "people were afraid of the water"
theory.

------
InclinedPlane
I'm very grateful someone finally wrote an article like this, it's so annoying
having to constantly readjust people's misconceptions on something so basic.

More so, the very idea almost refutes itself. "Nobody drank water back then
because everyone got sick all the time from drinking water" has an almost Yogi
Berra quality to it.

~~~
TillE
That's really not contradictory unless you take it incredibly literally.

------
jere
As someone mentioned in the comments (and the post author dismisses), a
reasonable version of this myth might be constrained to sailing.

I found an okay discussion on it here:
[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-2008...](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/archive/index.php/t-200849.html)

There's a reference to "Purser's Instructions", where apparently it is
mentioned that the Royal Navy sailors were allotted 1 gallon of beer per day.
I tried finding it online, but couldn't find the text. Kind of blows my mind
that in 2015 I can't just easily read any book that is more than 250 years
old.

------
rthomas6
I think history is a lot more interesting and makes a lot more sense when you
finally realize that people in the past were just as aware and smart as us, as
opposed to the bumbling idiots we often assume them to be.

~~~
tjradcliffe
If by "aware" you mean "ignorant of the most basic facts that we take for
granted", then yeah.

It's very hard to get our heads around the pre-scientific mindset. These
people were not stupid (if intelligence is even a little bit heritable and
provides any selective advantage they were in smarter than us, as there has
been zero selection for anything in the past 200 years, so we are the dumbest
generation of humans ever to live). But they, like Jon Snow, knew _nothing_.

They filled that vast void of ignorance with beliefs that make modern anti-
science people like opponents of vaccinations, GMOs and nuclear power look
like caricatures of the most rigidly limited kind of reductive materialism.

The thought that anyone might publicly test an idea that "just made sense"
using systematic observation, controlled experiment or Bayesian inference
(which people used long before Bayes, of course) as a matter of routine was
simply unknown. Arguments were settled via disputations over imagination,
putting one form of plausible bullshit against another and seeing which
advocate could sway the crowd of ignorant scholars.

So the world was full of causes no one could see, whose existence "just made
sense" so no one bothered to test. "Humours" and their "balance" caused health
and sickness. Saints and demons influenced all chance events. Thinking made it
so. God's plan was manifest by signs and portents. No major decision was taken
without prayer.

People (some people) laughed at George W Bush when he talked about doing God's
will, but a few hundred years ago everyone talked, and thought that way. They
took it for granted and they meant it with a depth and unquestioning sincerity
that today can be found only amongst Islamists and a few others.

They were capable technologists (there is an argument that technological
capability led the sciences in important ways) but they way technologists
thought about their materials and structures was completely alien to us. Much
of it was raw empiricism ("do this, that happens") wrapped in a tattered clock
of sympathetic magic and tortured religious/hermetic metaphor.

Imagine a world organized _in all walks of life_ around the ideas and mode of
thinking practiced by Jenny McCarthy, Food Babe, and Deepak Chopra and you'll
get a sense of it, absurd as it sounds.

~~~
rthomas6
You just confused 8000 years of post-agricultural society and culture, with
medieval western Europe.

Yes, people are much more educated now, because technology lets them get
better access to information, but I think it's inaccurate to say there were no
educated societies in the past. Think about Roman engineering. Arabic and
Indian mathematics. Baghdad with its libraries. On and on. Modern people
didn't invent most of the knowledge we now take for granted... we inherited it
from the past, where people found it out through trial and error. Just like we
discover new things now.

------
nkozyra
I've never heard it expressed as though people did not (as in ever) drink
water, but that beer and wine were far more popular as casual, everyday drinks
than they are now for purposes of sanitation.

Which makes some sense when you consider that the items mentioned - rainfall,
melted snow, etc. - are not readily available all times of the year in all
locales.

If anyone had said "they didn't drink water in the Medieval ages" I think
that, like stagnant water, it wouldn't pass anyone's sniff test.

~~~
kedean
The reason you gave is exactly what he argues against. The author is saying
that a) people DID drink lots of water, just as much as now, but thats
uninteresting and nobody would record that, and b) nobody in the past drank
because of sanitation reasons. They drank because it tasted good and we like
to get drunk, with the pleasant side effect of slightly improved sanitation,
but nobody at the time would have realized it.

~~~
dragonwriter
Whether they realized or not may be immaterial to whether or not the benefit
explains the prominence of the behavior -- a socially transmitted behavior
(meme) that gives those engaging in it a slight survival advantage can easily
be reinforced over time even without conscious recognition of the benefit of
the meme.

------
saalweachter
Would beer and wine actually have significantly less contamination than water?

My understanding is that you need to refrigerate any opened alcohol of less
than 15 or 20% because it will spoil. A quick reading of Wikipedia says that
it is the hops, not the alcohol, which prevent spoilage, and hops were not
mastered until the 13th century.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
It's not really that the alcohol is a factor, rather it's that the wort is
boiled and the process of boiling kills the pathogens. As long as the beer
isn't contaminated after boiling it's fine to drink.

~~~
PeterisP
The difference between beer and boiled water is that beer will generally stay
uncontaminated due to the alcohol content, while boiled water is clean only
for a limited time.

------
yogiHacks
This just in: Humans almost certainly drink water, and have for at least the
past two millennium.

haha, but in all seriousness, I always thought when people said "medieval
people didn't drink water" that they really meant "medieval people didn't
drink as much water, or drank dirty water".

There was a lecture I watched from someone who explained the Medieval period
as "everyone drinking beer because the water was so filthy" and the
Enlightenment as "everyone drinking tea because the beer was so intoxicating"
and the Industrial Revolution as "everyone drinking coffee because tea wasn't
strong enough".

I laughed at that and considered the whole idea of Medieval peoples drinking
beer instead of water as mostly hyperbole.

~~~
jrochkind1
I thought it was true as well, about ancient greece as well as midieval times.

People talk about how children used to drink beer until fairly recently -- I'm
not sure if _that's_ really true either, but it is usually explained that the
reason for this is that the water couldn't be trusted and nobody drank water,
and that part apparently isn't.

~~~
FreeFull
There were "small beers" which had very little alcohol content. The yeast is
fairly nutritious.

~~~
jrochkind1
yeah, I understood that... but misunderstood the reason they drank such beers
was cause they couldn't drink the water, I guess?

------
AdmiralAsshat
Not to attempt to reinforce the "common knowledge" that this article is
challenging, but the author includes numerous references to Greeks and Romans
drinking water. I thought the common assumption was that people in the _Dark
Ages_ avoided water in favor of wine due to poor sanitation practices. The
Romans bathed frequently and had dedicated holes in their roofs with a bowl in
the middle of their house to catch rainwater; I've never doubted that they
could attain clean drinking water.

~~~
dpierce9
^This. When you say 'medieval' and start talking about Galen, you have lost me
(even if you point about the medieval period is correct).

------
tremendo
The "Clean" episode [1] of PBS's "How We got to now" explored how in one
particular case drinking beer was preferred over drinking water. If I recall
correctly (the video is no longer available for streaming) drinking water
became contaminated and it was observed that regulars to a bar fared better
health-wise, leading to the assumption that beer/alcohol was safer.

Whether that story fed the myth discussed in the above article or not, I don't
know, but maybe it wasn't entirely baseless as it suggests.

[1]
[http://video.pbs.org/video/2365323193/](http://video.pbs.org/video/2365323193/)

------
markbnj
I don't see the revelation here. The reality always had to be much more
nuanced than a simple "they always drank short beer, never water." That's
silly. Of course people would be able to recognize clean water, and would not
hesitate to drink water they felt was clean. It was, after all, probably the
second liquid every human ever born became familiar with. However, sources of
clean water were much harder to come by in historical times than they are now.
A short beer, with alcohol content low enough not to cause inebriation, but
high enough to make bad bugs uncomfortable, was a reliable alternative.

------
chisleu
I was taught this in my college history classes in reference to cholera
outbreaks in the USA in the 1800s. We were taught people use "half beer" which
was 50/50 mixed with water, as a safety measure.

I have no idea if it is real. It was just what the book and professor said.

------
Evgeny
I'm not sure how "great" this myth is, considering that I learned about it
just from this article. Could be a cultural thing, of course, since I grew up
and was educated in Russia/USSR. We had our share of myths I'm sure.

------
matznerd
I'm not so sure about this, I have done some research on the topic for a book
I am working on and it appears that in some cities at certain times, safe
water was hard to come by and for that and other reasons people consumed
beer/wine as their primary beverage and with nearly every meal. I have studied
this in the context of the effects on society of coffee and coffee houses that
came with displacing beer and taverns as the main beverages and gathering
points of society in 17th and 18th century England.

Here is an excerpt from James Howell in 1660:

"Tis found already, that this coffee drink hath caused a greater sobriety
among the Nations. Whereas formerly Apprentices and clerks with others used to
take a morning draught of Ale, Beer or Wine, which, by the dizziness they
cause in the Brain, made many unfit for business, they use now to play the
Good-fellows in this wakeful and civil drink"

And another from the historian Michelet:

...For at length the tavern has been dethroned, the detestable tavern where,
half a century ago, our young folks rioted among wine-tubs and harlots. Fewer
drunken songs o' night time, fewer nobles lying in the gutter... Coffee the
sobering beverage, a mighty nutriment of the brain, unlike spirituous liquors,
increases purity and clarify; coffee, which clears the imagination of fogs and
heavy vapours, which illumines the reality of things with the white light of
truth; anti-erotic coffee, which at length substitutes stimulation of the mind
for stimulation of the sexual faculties!"

[1]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=Gbmhwpxe9usC&pg=PA10&lpg=P...](https://books.google.com/books?id=Gbmhwpxe9usC&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10&dq=hath+caused+a+greater+sobriety+among+the+Nations.+Whereas+formerly+Apprentices+and+clerks+with+others+used+to+take+a+morning+draught+of+Ale,+Beer+or+Wine,+which,+by+the+dizziness+they+cause+in+the+Brain,+made+many+unfit+for+business,+they+use+now+to+play+the+Good-
fellows+in+this+wakeful+and+civil+drink&source=bl&ots=rPgKd9fknG&sig=mVVqFbrC4KEv71lLqstfnag-
BKg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nfXbVKjCMY_ooASQqYKYCQ&ved=0CCMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=hath%20caused%20a%20greater%20sobriety%20among%20the%20Nations.%20Whereas%20formerly%20Apprentices%20and%20clerks%20with%20others%20used%20to%20take%20a%20morning%20draught%20of%20Ale%2C%20Beer%20or%20Wine%2C%20which%2C%20by%20the%20dizziness%20they%20cause%20in%20the%20Brain%2C%20made%20many%20unfit%20for%20business%2C%20they%20use%20now%20to%20play%20the%20Good-
fellows%20in%20this%20wakeful%20and%20civil%20drink&f=false)

------
amelius
Interesting to see that people in medieval times seem to have had actually
more environmental problems than we have now.

~~~
piqufoh
Really? Is this a genuine comment? That a medieval world population of
(optimistically) 500 million would produce more hazardous materials and waste
than an industrialised world population of 6 billion?

~~~
Shivetya
Likely in reference to their inability to deal with the conditions they faced,
either created directly or indirectly by themselves to say nothing of what
nature could do.

I am quite sure we all acknowledge modern man is very capable of wrecking the
environment, we are however able to prevent much of it and even correct it. It
never ceases to amaze me the amount of dangerous materials we work with
everyday that never impact the environment

------
gambiter
"Unfortunately, long-standing myths are not displaced by anything so flimsy as
documentation."

I like this guy.

------
failed_ideas
I was literally actually thinking of this just the other day. Alcohol now
gives me intestinal liquidity, possibly a result of too many years of 3-4 beer
a night. And I couldn't figure out how an entire populace raised on the stuff
wouldn't have had larger issues with beer than with water. I was thinking
there had to be something I was missing about what I was taught (and I was
taught it in college).

~~~
AdmiralAsshat
It's worth noting that beer hasn't exactly had a uniform makeup throughout
history. The kind originally made in Mesopotamia and given as rations to
soldiers was much more nutritious than the kind we drink recreationally now.

