Week 4: Sanitation

Introduction

Last week you learned about what the ancient Greeks and Romans put into their bodies to remain healthy, and whether that was food or something regarded as a drug or an antidote.

As with the ‘thankless’ eye remedy or the use of lead in cosmetics, some of the things they did to look or feel healthy would seem unhealthy to a modern audience. It is also now known that colostrum, which was thought bad for health, is in fact good, and it is possible to explain that wine kills the bacteria found in untreated water, even though the reasons why people in the ancient world mixed wine and water did not concern bacteria. But what about toilets and waste disposal?

This week focuses on human waste. Everyone needs to get rid of waste from their body. What were toilets like in the ancient world and what sort of evidence is there about this aspect of health? For example, according to Pliny the Elder, urine was an excellent guide to health: it should start clear in the morning and become darker as the day went on. You will examine how and why doctors intervened in evacuation, using a range of ways to purge the body and, they believed, restore health to the sick. You will encounter some unexpected toilet habits and some unusual uses for human waste, and will start to consider just how ancient hygiene worked.

To start the week, Helen King and Mathijs Lucassen discuss attitudes to toilets across the world today.

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Transcript: Video 1 Toilets across the world

HELEN KING

Hello. I’m Helen King, Professor of Classical Studies here at The Open University. And I’m talking to Mathijs Lucassen who’s from the School of Health, Wellbeing, and Social Care. Hello, Mathijs.

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

Hi.

HELEN KING

Today we’re going to talk toilets. So last week we looked at what goes into the human body, food and diet, and today it’s what comes out. So let’s think about toilets. And I have to say, I am a little bit insecure here because I have a recurring nightmare in which I’m trying to find a toilet, and the only ones I can find are ones without any doors. And I just can’t use them. So for me, the knowledge that the Romans had some communal toilets makes me feel very insecure indeed. So am I weird?

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

Well, I think no. I think that’s perfectly rational and normal. I think in a modern Western context we would very much see toileting and toilets as very much a private space and not to be shared with others.

HELEN KING

But the Romans don’t seem to have the same views as us here, which makes me a bit concerned about how I can ever understand people who can do such strange things. And it’s not just toilets. It’s actually what you do in there.

So these objects we have here. And I’ve got one, and you’ve got another one. I mean, they look sort of superficially similar-- stick, brush or sponge on the end. But, of course, they’re completely different. This is our mock up of a Roman sponge on a stick, which is basically toilet paper. This is what you wipe yourself with. Whereas that is what you put down the toilet to clean the toilet. So same sort of shape, fundamentally different. Do you know about these things?

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

Yeah. I’m hoping it’s disposable.

HELEN KING

Uh, it so isn’t. No, I’m afraid not. Sorry. You put them into a bucket after use for use by the next person. There’s a theory that the buckets contained vinegar, so it sort of vaguely might kill something. But even so, I find that quite disturbing.

And, of course, toilets are quite smelly places, too, particularly no-flush toilets clearly. Some sort of water going around that would wash the sticks and possibly sort of go through the toilet area a bit, as well, but nothing like a modern flush toilet.

Today, we’ve got all sorts of smell neutralisers and things. I mean this one claims it’s got 50 ingredients, sounds like some sort of ancient remedy where the more the merrier really. But nothing like that in the ancient world. So smelly places and known to be smelly places.

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

Yeah, and this completely contrasts, as well, I guess, if you’re sort of having the smells and being exposed to those. Because in the modern world we have sprays like this one which sort of sanitise and deodorise. But we can also select any scent we like. So instead of smelling faecal matter, we’re smelling cherry blossom or lavender--

HELEN KING

Roses.

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

--or roses. Whatever scent you like, you can pick it out. And have that scent instead.

HELEN KING

Yeah. It does seem like a different attitude to smell, although the Romans were certainly aware of quite how smelly their toilets and other things around the place would be.

If you can’t go to the toilet, opposite problem, today, of course, we’ve got all sorts of constipation remedies, gentle, effective constipation relief. In the ancient world, I found a recipe from the Roman writer Apicius which is for a laxative dish of celery and leeks, where you cook up your celery and your leeks together. And that’s supposed to have the same effect. I don’t know whether it would, but it sounds a lot nicer in some ways, do you think?

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

Well, I don’t know what that would taste like. Maybe if it was sort of like a nice soup it could be quite flavoursome. But I do quite like the appeal of getting a tablet over the counter.

[LAUGHTER]

HELEN KING

Yes, I suppose there are certain advantages for over-the-counter medicine. It’s quicker, at least.

And then, of course, there’s this young fellow here, the octopus. This octopus is here to remind me that actually Romans were quite insecure about their sewers. So sewers, strange space, long way away, things could be there. And there’s an urban myth story from Rome of a giant octopus that comes up through the sewers. Do we have similar insecurities about what’s going on underneath our toilets?

MATHIJS LUCASSEN

I think we probably have some issues in terms of rats and rodents in sewer systems. And we probably don’t want to think about them too much. But, yeah, I think that people-- how much of that is a problem and how much of that is an urban myth is probably hard to disentangle.

HELEN KING

I’ve certainly read the odd story about alligators or crocodiles that people have had as pets, then try to dispose of, try to come up back through the toilet system again. So maybe we are quite insecure about these things in some ways.

Well, thank you very much. And I hope that hasn’t put you off anything else that we’re going to do in this course.

End transcript: Video 1 Toilets across the world

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Video 1 Toilets across the world

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