Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogel Bomb Here, consider the flush toilet. It's a
Speaker 1: fascinating device if you think about it. This giant porcelain
Speaker 1: chair is installed into every modern American bathroom, using up
Speaker 1: gallons of precious drinking water every day to whisk your
Speaker 1: urinine feces into oblivion. Better known as the municipal wastewater
Speaker 1: treatment plant nearest you every time you flush. But have
Speaker 1: you ever considered what else we could be doing with
Speaker 1: our poop and p You probably don't really want to
Speaker 1: think about it, and neither does pretty much anybody else,
Speaker 1: which is why the flush toilet we twenty first century
Speaker 1: humans use hasn't changed much since it was first patented
Speaker 1: in seventeen seventy five by Scottish watchmaker named Alexander Cumming.
Speaker 1: Cummings toilet was a slightly altered version of the commode
Speaker 1: designed for Queen Elizabeth the First by her godson, Sir
Speaker 1: John Harrington's in two. Cummings had an S shaped pipe
Speaker 1: to trap bad odors, while Harrington's had not, of course,
Speaker 1: self flushing toilet, heated seats and those vacuum potties like
Speaker 1: you see on airplanes and tour buses came later, but
Speaker 1: our one and done attitude towards commode innovation probably comes
Speaker 1: from the fact that we simply don't want to think
Speaker 1: about poop that much. We spoke with Diana mcdonnaugh, a
Speaker 1: professor of industrial design in the Beckman Institute of Advanced
Speaker 1: Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.
Speaker 1: She said, within the American culture, there is still a
Speaker 1: resistance and reluctance to discuss body waste. The toilet has
Speaker 1: remained relatively unexplored. I think because we're failing to realize that,
Speaker 1: to quote a British saying, where there is muck, there's brass.
Speaker 1: We are failing to see the potential opportunity our modest
Speaker 1: toilet is offering us because the notion of immersing yourself
Speaker 1: in such a product makes us all feel so uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: But going to the bathroom isn't something we've always been
Speaker 1: squeamish about. Long ago, it was just another experience, an
Speaker 1: opportunity for relaxation and hanging out. The ancient Romans used
Speaker 1: toilet time as a time to catch up with their friends.
Speaker 1: In the year threef B. C Rome had one and
Speaker 1: forty four bustling public toilets lined with stone benches with
Speaker 1: keyhole shaped cutouts situated all along them, where people would
Speaker 1: sit together and do their business and maybe some gossiping too.
Speaker 1: Later in medieval England, you could be walking down the
Speaker 1: street and someone might throw the contents of their chamber
Speaker 1: pot out the window onto you. Oops. They might say
Speaker 1: sorry about it, but it would kind of be on
Speaker 1: you for walking too close to their house. Fancier medieval
Speaker 1: people used a guard robe, a little closet stuck onto
Speaker 1: the side of a castle with a hole in the
Speaker 1: floor that emptied into a moat or cesspit. Clothes were
Speaker 1: also kept in the guard robe, but because it was
Speaker 1: that stench of human waste would keep the fleas and
Speaker 1: moths out of the garments. Public guarter robes in London
Speaker 1: emptied directly into the Thames, which was an unbelievably poor
Speaker 1: public health move. As the population of Europe grew over
Speaker 1: the course of the eighteen hundreds, up to a hundred
Speaker 1: people would share the same public guarter robe, and the
Speaker 1: waist just washed into the rivers, tainting the drinking water supply,
Speaker 1: which explains why so many outbreaks of cholera, typhoid, and
Speaker 1: other water borne diseases bedeviled nineteenth century Europeans, resulting in
Speaker 1: more than half the working class population dying before the
Speaker 1: age of five. It was a mess as a result
Speaker 1: of a particularly hot summer in London in eighteen fifty eight,
Speaker 1: when the smell of rotting sewage made living in the
Speaker 1: city completely unbearable. Parliament commissioned the construction of the London Sewer,
Speaker 1: which was finished in eighteen sixty five. Deaths resulting from
Speaker 1: waterborne diseases plummeted, and cities all over the world followed
Speaker 1: suit and constructed their own sanitary sewers. The toilet patented
Speaker 1: by Coming eventually became standard in houses in wealthy countries
Speaker 1: all over the world, along with slight variations patented by
Speaker 1: others like Thomas Crapper, yes that's his real name, whose
Speaker 1: contributions to the overall design of the toilet were minimal,
Speaker 1: but whose legacy in endoors because he made sure his
Speaker 1: name was visible on all of his products. And hey,
Speaker 1: it's great that fewer people are dying due to poor
Speaker 1: sanitation in these places anymore, But the toilet is due
Speaker 1: for an upgrade, so what do we need our new
Speaker 1: toilets to do? McDonough said, toilets offer a relatively unexplored
Speaker 1: territory that offers signific potential in respect to healthy living
Speaker 1: and healthy aging. As individuals are taking more responsibility for
Speaker 1: their health, eating habits, and well being, the bathroom offers
Speaker 1: a somewhat blank canvas for us to integrate intuitive technology
Speaker 1: to support the individual. Imagine a toilet that could tell
Speaker 1: you how hydrated you were, whether you were deficient in
Speaker 1: particular vitamins, warn you of blood in your stools, and
Speaker 1: changes in your hormones. We literally flush all that information
Speaker 1: away each day in the form of waste matter, so
Speaker 1: we could find out a lot about our own health
Speaker 1: from our toilets. But according to the Bill and Melinda
Speaker 1: Gates Foundation, which launched their Reinvent the Toilet Challenge back in,
Speaker 1: the next generation of toilets will also be able to
Speaker 1: kill pathogens, compost human waste, and keep up with the
Speaker 1: fast urbanization of the twenty first century. And all that
Speaker 1: without sewer infrastructure, electricity, or a water source. They might
Speaker 1: even be able to mine our waste for valuable elements
Speaker 1: like phosphorus, nitrogen and potassium, and separate solid and liquid
Speaker 1: waste in order to use them to make things like
Speaker 1: building supplies. But will the new toilets look very much
Speaker 1: different from the in your bathroom now or the one
Speaker 1: Sir John Harrington made for Queen Elizabeth in the sixteenth century.
Speaker 1: Probably not much, unless you've got any bright ideas. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Jessline Shields and produced by Tyler
Speaker 1: Clang for I Heeart Media and How Stuff Works. For
Speaker 1: more on this and lots of other topics, visit our
Speaker 1: home planet, how Stuff Works dot com.