"Despite their large multi-seat public latrines with washing facilities, sewer systems, sanitation legislation, fountains and piped drinking water from aqueducts, we see the widespread presence of whipworm (Trichuris trichiura), roundworm (Ascaris lumbricoides) and Entamoeba histolytica that causes dysentery. This would suggest that the public sanitation measures were insufficient to protect the population from parasites spread by fecal contamination. Ectoparasites such as fleas, head lice, body lice, pubic lice and bed bugs were also present, and delousing combs have been found. The evidence fails to demonstrate that the Roman culture of regular bathing in the public baths reduced the prevalence of these parasites."
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.
I wonder how bad was the early onset of cities compared to small groups near clean natural resources. Did bathing in a river prove healthier ? the amount of flow would carry away toxic waste rapidly I guess.
If you go to the public latrine at Ephesus today, it looks pretty awesome. It's out in the air. Nice views in all directions. If you can get over the communal nature of it, it seems like a fantastic spot to do your business.
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.
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.
That's because you are comparing it with our current systems. You have to compare it with what it existed before, basically people relieving themselves everywhere.
Not just what existed before, but also after. The normal toilet on Scandinavian farms into the mid-19th century was basically just a pole suspended between two houses. What people "produced" just dropped on the ground below the pole.
I don't think Romans invented sewage systems or plumbing. That existed all over the Mediterranean for hundreds of years prior we just don't know much about them (no written sources, less archaeological research/evidence etc.).
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).
> 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...)
I was being tongue in cheek about that one. Winning/losing, nah its not about that. Its about whetting one's curiosity and to be filled with wonder about human's accomplished with a strange attractor on scatological humor.
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.
Well, it depends on what you mean by "popular" history. Popular, were? I grew up in Greece and I learned early on about the Minoan palaces with running water (and internal heating). As to the sanitary practices of mainland Greeks, I remember this joke, variously starring Aesop or Socrates:
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).
They didn't - they used ripped pieces of fabric and cloth to wipe themselves. They used the sponges to clear obstructions, somewhat like a combined toilet brush / plunger.
> 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.
> 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.
Centralised latrines with waste diverted from freshwater supplies would be a net-net win over, say, backyard privvies which soaked directly into adjacent wells and surface streams. The latter was the case in cities such as London and New York well into the 19th, and early 20th, centuries. Keep in mind that the haulage of human waste itself ("night soil" in some cultures) was a major activity with its dedicated labour pool (pardon the mental image...), though that was in part based on social shunning of those who were so employed.
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:
> 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.
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.
There's a reason I'd linked the NYC "pestilence" chart.
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.
I think they got a daily vinegar ration to soak the sponge and make it less smelly. Some believe that the sponge offered to christ on the cross was a poo vinegar sponge.
I remember reading that autoimmune diseases are more common in people descended from regions that survived the bubonic plague, and that it’s believed this is because the survivors of the plague had mutations which meant they had a more active immune system.
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.