AHC: Improve sanitation in the High Middle Ages

[sloreck]

Part of the problem with "tea" drinking, and lots of other possibilities exist beyond tea which have been drunk for ages, is fuel. There were all sorts of rules about what the serfs/peasants could gather for their own use from the forest. Poaching deer or fish,while not uncommon, carried heavy penalties. Likewise what wood could be taken for fuel was very regulated. When all of your heat and cooking fuel is quite restricted, the ability to boil water and make a hot drink - herbal tea, spruce tea or whatever, is limited.

In terms of the sorts of methods for treating sewage, you need to have someone decide this is worth the effort and cost to do it. OTL in towns literally just dumping the contents of chamber pots in to the streets was de rigeur.

 

[ComradeHuxley]

In terms of the sorts of methods for treating sewage, you need to have someone decide this is worth the effort and cost to do it. OTL in towns literally just dumping the contents of chamber pots in to the streets was de rigeur.

The marketing of urban human waste in the early modern Edo/Tokyo Metropolitan area
is a pretty interesting study about the japanese solution to the problem

"Among other waste issues, the disposal of human waste has historically been one of the most serious challenges for major cities. The historical literature suggests that Japan’s urban society took a unique approach to management of human waste. Throughout Japan’s early modern period, human waste in the city was purchased by farmers living on the urban fringe and was used as an agricultural fertilizer. Using this “night soil,” villages supplied fresh agricultural produce to the urban market. This article focuses on the use of urban human waste in the Edo/Tokyo metropolitan area, in relation to urban land use and transportation from the seventeenth to the early twentieth-century."

http://www.vrm.ca/wp-content/uploads/EUE1_Tajima.pdf

 

[sloreck]

OTL the city of Milwaukee sells "Milorganite" which is a fertilizer made from sewage, however unlike the night soil from Edo/Tokyo in the past, has been treated to deal with issues of infectious organisms (bacteria, viruses, parasites, etc). This is done on other places. While removing sewage from a town/city proper is a good step, simply dumping untreated sewage/human waste in a river or hauling out to farms to be used untreated as fertilizer creates other problems.

 

[The Professor]

You could go a long way by giving Europeans a taste for a local infusion, having it become even more ubiquitous as a drink than water.

This happening in much of Asia with tea may have significantly reduced mortality by causing people to drink boiled water, instead of the one they got from the river downstream from the other city's sewage.

This is why Europeans brewed alcohol as it served much the same purpose. So called Small Beer was a common drink about 1%, enough to kill germs, not enough to get you drunk.

 

[La Rouge Beret]

Thanks for your ideas, this idea is for an ASB TL that I've been toying with for sometime. While it is unlikely to be posted here in the short term, the research gained from our discussions will play a part.

 

[RMcD94]

Encouraging shaving/hair management would reduce lice and the transmission of diseases from non human animals to humans.

There's the issue that most people will probably cut themselves on the razor which is probably worse though.

Giving everyone alopecia would probably be useful

 

[Richard V]

Modern composting toilets treat waste by A) speed up decomposition by increasing temperature using insulation, the saw dust creates air pockets which help decomposition. Some toilets use solar power or agreenhouse effect to further speed things up. And B) separating urine from poop as the ammonia in urine harms the microbes doing decomposition.

Simpler methods like handwashing, wearing gloves, use of copper, bronze and brass for contact surfaces to kill microbes would be easier to achieve. I heard a lot of preventable deaths happened due to poor dental hygine. Rotten teeth gets infected and then you die. Toothbrushes were ancient, and dental floss should be easy to do.

 

[DarkKayder]

The amount of fuel required for boiling water is negligeble, specially as the fire can be used to heat both a pot and a kettle simultaneously. There must also had been much greater use of timber during winter to keep warm than the small bit used for cooking.

 

[sloreck]

Handwashing, yes sort of since soap is a bit scarce. Gloves, nope no rubber gloves now. Using metals for contact surfaces, maybe for the wealthy but not for anyone else. Dental hygiene can be improved with brushing even without anything but water, floss nope. Have to tailor this to the technology and the economy of the time.

 

[Deleted member 114175]

If you got, say, Voltaire and Thomas Aquinas in a room together, chances are that Voltaire would be the smellier of the two by some distance.

Holy Roman Empire 1 - Voltaire 0

 

[Richard V]

Handwashing, yes sort of since soap is a bit scarce. Gloves, nope no rubber gloves now. Using metals for contact surfaces, maybe for the wealthy but not for anyone else. Dental hygiene can be improved with brushing even without anything but water, floss nope. Have to tailor this to the technology and the economy of the time.

Gloves have been around since antiquity and any fiber can be used for dental floss.

 

[Fabius Maximus]

The amount of fuel required for boiling water is negligeble, specially as the fire can be used to heat both a pot and a kettle simultaneously. There must also had been much greater use of timber during winter to keep warm than the small bit used for cooking.

Also, China had a lot of problems finding fuel thanks to deforestation, and that didn't stop tea becoming/remaining popular.

Handwashing, yes sort of since soap is a bit scarce. Gloves, nope no rubber gloves now. Using metals for contact surfaces, maybe for the wealthy but not for anyone else. Dental hygiene can be improved with brushing even without anything but water, floss nope. Have to tailor this to the technology and the economy of the time.

IIRC dental hygiene wasn't generally an issue until the sixteenth-century discovery of sugar, so the lack of toothbrushes shouldn't be too big an issue.

 

[sloreck]

@Richard V: Sure gloves have been around a long time, however wearing non-disposable gloves made of leather or fabric does little to stop disease transmission. Disposable (or significantly cleanable/sterilzeable) gloves don't exist at this time. Simple thorough handwashing with soap is better than generic uncleaned gloves.

 

[Richard V]

@Richard V: Sure gloves have been around a long time, however wearing non-disposable gloves made of leather or fabric does little to stop disease transmission. Disposable (or significantly cleanable/sterilzeable) gloves don't exist at this time. Simple thorough handwashing with soap is better than generic uncleaned gloves.

Any kind of glove would help as most germs die in minutes on a dry surface.

For the ultimate low hanging fruit have the eating utensil not falling from use after the end of the Western Roman Empire. In fact a lot of Roman habits like bathing, shaving and use of aqueducts and public fountains were good hygienic practices.

 

[Gloss]

Any kind of glove would help as most germs die in minutes on a dry surface.

For the ultimate low hanging fruit have the eating utensil not falling from use after the end of the Western Roman Empire. In fact a lot of Roman habits like bathing, shaving and use of aqueducts and public fountains were good hygienic practices.

Medieval people bathed too, plus medieval Europe had overall new diseases that Rome didn't seem to have.

 

[David II]

This is not sanitation but what if cats weren't hated/repeled during middle age? More cats = less rats = less plagues

 

[Fabius Maximus]

This is not sanitation but what if cats weren't hated/repeled during middle age? More cats = less rats = less plagues

I think that's another myth. Renaissance-era cities sometimes culled stray cats and dogs to try and stop the spread of disease, but AFAICT this doesn't appear to have been common practice in the middle ages. Plus, the allegedly cat-hating area of Latin Christendom doesn't seem to have suffered from plagues at a greater rate or intensity than the comparably more pro-feline rest of the world.

 

[marathag]

The amount of fuel required for boiling water is negligeble, specially as the fire can be used to heat both a pot and a kettle simultaneously. There must also had been much greater use of timber during winter to keep warm than the small bit used for cooking.

With a modern, high efficiency woodstove, yes, one pound of dry hardwood can boil 30 gallons of water.

But over an open fire with a rudimentary chimney?
Going to need more wood.

Cooking fires will remove trees at a quicker rate than you might expect. Some Feudal Lords had strict restrictions on woodcutting and even gathering of deadwood in areas not marked for common use, and those areas could be denuded fast.

 

[La Rouge Beret]

With a modern, high efficiency woodstove, yes, one pound of dry hardwood can boil 30 gallons of water.

But over an open fire with a rudimentary chimney?
Going to need more wood.

Cooking fires will remove trees at a quicker rate than you might expect. Some Feudal Lords had strict restrictions on woodcutting and even gathering of deadwood in areas not marked for common use, and those areas could be denuded fast.

Could you do anything to improve the chimney construction and or woodstove?

 

[marathag]

Could you do anything to improve the chimney construction and or woodstove?

Well, the Franklin, but iron is expensive in even high Medieval times so that helps the rich, who already can afford all the wood they want.

But with Brick or stone

High thermal mass, and retains good draft for efficient burning while keeping the heat from flying out the chimney