Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Invention. My name is Robert lamp and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. And Robert, I got a question for you.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to like a festival or big
Speaker 1: public event where the organizers did not get enough porta potties?
Speaker 1: Probably so, probably so. Um, it's I mean, it's it's
Speaker 1: a weird it's a weird equation you have to work out, right,
Speaker 1: because you need to have the approximate number of porta
Speaker 1: potties for a given event. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: like I've definitely I've been to events where people care
Speaker 1: more for the porta potties, Like there's more of a
Speaker 1: communal effort to like, let's let's look after these porta potties.
Speaker 1: Let's even go in there and clean the porta potties
Speaker 1: right to ensure that things don't get too vile too fast.
Speaker 1: Like if there's if it's a multi day event, people
Speaker 1: might be more respectful of the fact that people will
Speaker 1: need to continue to use these over a period of
Speaker 1: time than if it's just like a it's you know,
Speaker 1: this is going on for a few hours, let's just
Speaker 1: go total war on these facilities. Uh. I've been to
Speaker 1: a one time went to a beer tasting festival in
Speaker 1: North Carolina where they did not get nearly enough porta potties,
Speaker 1: and I remember feeling like, this is the closest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever felt to like a Mad Max type scenario
Speaker 1: in real life. People were losing their minds, Like when
Speaker 1: when you don't have a place you've been drinking beer
Speaker 1: and then you don't have a place where you can
Speaker 1: legally and uh in uh in a in a polite way,
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, things start to get dire really fast. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm guessing there's probably a lot of indiscriminate aiming
Speaker 1: from male urinators at this these particular events. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: was also a you could tell just like this all
Speaker 1: over the place, frantic search like ants foraging about looking
Speaker 1: for other places they could go apart from really far
Speaker 1: too few porta potties that were swarmed by people waiting.
Speaker 1: But you start doing some very odd math if you're
Speaker 1: in a situation like that, or even if you're not,
Speaker 1: even if it's not that bad you're just waiting in
Speaker 1: line to use a porta potty at least I find
Speaker 1: I do. And one of the questions that I think
Speaker 1: you inevitably start pondering is how much exactly do people
Speaker 1: poop in a lifetime? Like how much do I poop
Speaker 1: in a year? How much do does does my whole
Speaker 1: household poop in? You know, in twenty years? Yeah, though
Speaker 1: these are not necessarily factors that are going to help
Speaker 1: you out for you know, weekend music festival. No, no,
Speaker 1: but I mean you have to imagine that there's some
Speaker 1: kind of rough math along those lines going in. I
Speaker 1: guess it's less for the festival. It's probably less thinking
Speaker 1: about the total mass of poop and more about like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how many people and how often they'll
Speaker 1: need to go, because it's not like the things are
Speaker 1: going to be filled up and overflowing at least hopefully not.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that is the thing that you can start
Speaker 1: wondering about, and it's a weird question once you actually
Speaker 1: get the answer. I I found an article that addresses this.
Speaker 1: It was a article on Live Science by Mindy Weisberger
Speaker 1: addressing exactly this question full on with an interview with
Speaker 1: a like health professional who had the dirt. So it's
Speaker 1: impossible to answer this question exactly how much you poop
Speaker 1: in a lifetime, because of course everybody's different, there's different
Speaker 1: average fecal mass production, there's different lifespan and all that.
Speaker 1: But it's actually fairly easy to get some average figures.
Speaker 1: So the article sites Kim Barrett, a professor of medicine
Speaker 1: at you See San Diego, and Barrett says, on average,
Speaker 1: men and women have roughly one bowel movement per day.
Speaker 1: Though if you have more than that or less than that,
Speaker 1: don't panic. There's a normal range that's more and less.
Speaker 1: It's okay. But the daily average amount of feces produced
Speaker 1: by mass by a person an adult is usually about
Speaker 1: fourteen to seventeen ounces or about four hundred to five
Speaker 1: hundred grams. And from there, Weisberger does some simple math.
Speaker 1: Quote starting with an average daily amount of about fourteen
Speaker 1: ounces or four hundred grams, the total poop production in
Speaker 1: a week's time would be about six pounds or two
Speaker 1: point eight kill grams. In a year, a single person
Speaker 1: would yield about three hundred and twenty pounds or a
Speaker 1: hundreds of poop, just a little more than an adult panda. Ways,
Speaker 1: al right, so when when one here's the sort of
Speaker 1: drill sergeant cliche of like I've I've craped bigger than you.
Speaker 1: That's probably true. If you're looking at a like a
Speaker 1: year's worth of defecation, Well, that starts to call to
Speaker 1: mind this thing that it got me thinking about. It
Speaker 1: makes it got me thinking about how as people get older,
Speaker 1: often their bodies shrink. Right, you know, after adulthood your
Speaker 1: body can actually physically shrink. You don't continue getting bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger as life goes on. And yet there's this
Speaker 1: invisible phantom of biomass following every person around throughout the years,
Speaker 1: and no matter what, it's always getting larger and larger
Speaker 1: the older you get. It is the phantom mountain of
Speaker 1: combined mass of all the feces you've ever produced. Like
Speaker 1: like a big poop golem following you around, you have
Speaker 1: an invisible phantom poop golem that follows you everywhere and
Speaker 1: only gets bigger with age. So so this means that,
Speaker 1: like if you live to the age of seventy six,
Speaker 1: Weisberger does the math, on average, you'll produce like twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand, three hundred and twenty pounds or eleven thousand
Speaker 1: and thirty kilograms of poop in your lifetime. If you
Speaker 1: live to eighty one, it's more like, it's close to
Speaker 1: twenty six thousand pounds, are close to twelve thousand kilograms. Quote,
Speaker 1: So a lifetime of a woman's poop, because of the
Speaker 1: average female lifespan is about eighty one years in the
Speaker 1: United States. Uh, the average lifetime of a woman's poop
Speaker 1: weighs as much as three adult male hippos. But if
Speaker 1: you follow the same averages we've mentioned a minute ago,
Speaker 1: think about those people who lived like a hundred and twenty,
Speaker 1: you know, the super supercentenarians. Uh. One of these people
Speaker 1: who lives to like a hundred and twenty has created,
Speaker 1: by the end of their life a phantom poop mountain
Speaker 1: or one of these poop golems of thirty eight thousand,
Speaker 1: four hundred pounds or about seventeen thousand, four hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty kilograms. I was trying to find an object to
Speaker 1: compare this to. It's close to the weight of a
Speaker 1: number of lighter combat vehicles like the M twenty four
Speaker 1: Chafe light tank first used by the Americans in World
Speaker 1: War Two. Just imagine this. If you live to a
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty, over the course of your life, you can,
Speaker 1: on average poop a tank. All right. Well, Uh, let's
Speaker 1: think about these poop golems. Um, obviously they cannot live
Speaker 1: with us. They might live elsewhere. And that's why that's
Speaker 1: where we get to the subject of today's episode and
Speaker 1: the episode to follow this, because this is gonna be
Speaker 1: a two parter and we think you'll love this one,
Speaker 1: but episode number two is going to be real doozy. Yes.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's the subject of our episodes. It
Speaker 1: brings us to the technology of the toilet and ultimately
Speaker 1: the concept of the flush toilet. Um. So, I think
Speaker 1: in today's episode we're gonna be focusing primarily on sort
Speaker 1: of the history of toilet technology, what we what we
Speaker 1: were dealing with, like the problems faced by disposal of
Speaker 1: human waste and and toilets before the flush toilet was invented, right,
Speaker 1: And then in the next episode we'll meet the power
Speaker 1: of the flush. But so, I think one of the
Speaker 1: things to think about is that the problem of what
Speaker 1: to do with human waste only really becomes a huge
Speaker 1: issue once you have sedentary lifestyles and civilization, Like once
Speaker 1: you get a lot of people living in roughly the
Speaker 1: same place and not constantly moving right absolutely, Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I was looking back at one of my favorite books
Speaker 1: on hygiene clean a History of Personal Hygiene Impurity by
Speaker 1: Virginia Smith, and she points out that making sure that
Speaker 1: your poop is somewhere other than your immediate living environment
Speaker 1: has always been just a universal human behavior. It's just
Speaker 1: part of of our our species and certainly see this
Speaker 1: in any number of species as well. Um, I mean,
Speaker 1: you see like dogs would rather go poop somewhere far
Speaker 1: away from where they live, you know, they don't want
Speaker 1: to poop in their den right, and they're they're even
Speaker 1: you know, we've talked about coprophagia. There even like some
Speaker 1: ideas and science about like when a dog ends up
Speaker 1: pooping in its house this may come from like an
Speaker 1: instinct to the fact that sometimes dogs will then eat it,
Speaker 1: which seems gross to us, is actually something to like
Speaker 1: prevent possible parasite eggs from hatching in it, because there
Speaker 1: can be a health risk from poop staying around in
Speaker 1: your living areas. Yeah, and if you want to hear
Speaker 1: more about this stuff, Toble your mind has an entire
Speaker 1: episode about animals eating poop. That's right. We're not going
Speaker 1: to be focusing on eating poop today, except in the
Speaker 1: sense the toilet eats poop if you will, Yeah, you can.
Speaker 1: You can look at it that way for sure. So
Speaker 1: you know, back when we were just nomadic creatures, we
Speaker 1: didn't have to worry about this is so much. You
Speaker 1: you poop where you had to poop, You did whatever
Speaker 1: you needed to do to to hide the feces. But
Speaker 1: then you're going to be moving on. You're not going
Speaker 1: to stay in that immediate area, and you're probably there
Speaker 1: aren't that many of you anyway, like any given group
Speaker 1: of human nomads. Uh, it's not going to be the
Speaker 1: size of of a of a village or the stuff
Speaker 1: certainly the size of a large metropolitan area. Now, that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean there are no dangers associated with defecation at
Speaker 1: this stage. Even though you're not gonna have nearly as
Speaker 1: much of a problem with what to do with the excrement,
Speaker 1: you are still like when you when you go to
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, you're putting yourself in a vulnerable state. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I mean, poop itself opens up vulnerabilities. And you see
Speaker 1: this in any number of animals that have various methods
Speaker 1: for hiding their own poops. Sometimes it's essentially self hiding,
Speaker 1: such as the way a goats poop will rolled away. Goats,
Speaker 1: you know, often would favor hilly environment so that the
Speaker 1: poop rolls away hides itself. Cats, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: of course, or are known for their uh their their
Speaker 1: skillet bearing their poop uh and thus hiding it from
Speaker 1: from larger predators, because that's the fear, right, is that
Speaker 1: your fecal matter is h is a signal. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: an it's a it's an odor that is letting anyone
Speaker 1: with a nose to smell it know where you are
Speaker 1: and perhaps what degree of healthier in as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you are a prey animal, it shows you where
Speaker 1: a predator can come get a meal. If you're a predator,
Speaker 1: it can scare off prey animals. Uh. There's a paper
Speaker 1: that looked into into some of this. It's a two
Speaker 1: paper called the Control of Defecation in Humans and Evolutionary Advantage.
Speaker 1: The question mark part of it there by Italian bowel
Speaker 1: experts G. Bessatti and V. Villainacci. And they did something
Speaker 1: interesting here. They ran a human fecal sample. Uh. They well,
Speaker 1: they use both a modern and an ancient example through
Speaker 1: complex gas uh chromatographic mass spec spectrometric analysis, and they
Speaker 1: discovered that quote, human feces are rich in volatile compounds
Speaker 1: likely to be identified by potential predators. And so they
Speaker 1: went on to argue that the high predation risk for
Speaker 1: ancient hominids by large carnivores suggests something rather amazing about
Speaker 1: our pooping powers. Quote. We hypothesize that the voluntary control
Speaker 1: defecation by our ancestors, together with greater brain volume or
Speaker 1: rex stature, opposable thumbs, and other changes, may have contributed
Speaker 1: to the successful march of hominids along the road of evolution.
Speaker 1: In fact, by deciding when, how and where to defecate
Speaker 1: may have several advantages in the complex prey predator relationship,
Speaker 1: because spores are left in places undetectable by predators, or
Speaker 1: there are no fecal tracks who sent maybe easily individualated
Speaker 1: by prey. So they propose that choosing carefully where to
Speaker 1: poop maybe an important part of what kind of animal
Speaker 1: we are exactly so, But but even from an early
Speaker 1: point um, as a Virginia Smith points out, Neolithic people's
Speaker 1: they made use of midden piles, so you would have
Speaker 1: an area in which you're living and if you need
Speaker 1: to to poop you're either pooping beyond the area in
Speaker 1: which you're living, or you're taking your poop and dumping
Speaker 1: it out there in in the midden pile. And there
Speaker 1: are you know, a few different systems that that one
Speaker 1: can use here, one of course, is the dry sewer
Speaker 1: system and UH and this is this will remind probably
Speaker 1: a lot of people of a cat box, because they
Speaker 1: a cat's litter box is a dry sewer system. UH.
Speaker 1: That this would have been an indoor bucket of sand,
Speaker 1: ash or dirt that one would defecate into. And then
Speaker 1: you could take that dirt, sand or ash outside, take
Speaker 1: it to the mid and bile dump it out and
Speaker 1: you're done. Or you could do it in the inverse.
Speaker 1: I mean this is actually still a common method and
Speaker 1: dry pit latrines around the world. Like if you've got
Speaker 1: an outhouse and it's just a pit latrine. UM, a
Speaker 1: common thing to do to help prevent smells and and
Speaker 1: help keep things from getting too nasty is after you
Speaker 1: do your business in the pit, you've got a bucket
Speaker 1: of like old coal ash or something like that, or
Speaker 1: lime or something in the uh in the outhouse, and
Speaker 1: you scatter that on top and that helps contain smells
Speaker 1: and so forth. Now, of course, the wet sewer system.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get more into that in a bit, but that,
Speaker 1: of course is ultimately what we have today in much
Speaker 1: of the world, where you certainly a flush toy it
Speaker 1: as an example of this, right, and that simply derives
Speaker 1: from sort of the the ingenious mechanical action of water flow. Right,
Speaker 1: if you have to if you want to, say, poop
Speaker 1: in a chamber pot or in a bucket or something
Speaker 1: like that, you've got to physically remove it yourself from
Speaker 1: where you are. If you are to poop into moving water,
Speaker 1: then the moving water can remove your waste for you,
Speaker 1: and you don't have to do that, right, Or I
Speaker 1: guess one could poop into a container of water that
Speaker 1: is not moving and then you remove that yourself. That's
Speaker 1: also a possibility, I guess it is. Now the other
Speaker 1: there are all kinds of things you can poop into,
Speaker 1: and I imagine people have tried all of them at
Speaker 1: one point or another. Now, beyond this dry wet distinction,
Speaker 1: there's another important one that Smith points out, and she
Speaker 1: says that toilet culture divides sharply into wiper and washer culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this is of course is just how one cleans
Speaker 1: one's bum. Toilet deification. Yeah, like toilet paper versus like
Speaker 1: b day or wet wipes or something like that. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: most ancient culture, she points out that they were wipers,
Speaker 1: so they would have used certainly paper if it was available.
Speaker 1: Of course, for the longest paper was Um, it was
Speaker 1: a rarity. So you're gonna probably depend on things like grass, leaves, sticks,
Speaker 1: corn cobs, mud balls, and of course stones I've commonly
Speaker 1: seen sided. I'm trying to imagine this. I just see
Speaker 1: it pop up in like articles about ancient toilets that
Speaker 1: people would use bits of broken pottery to clean themselves.
Speaker 1: That I see that sited. But I'm just trying to
Speaker 1: picture it, and it will not picture it. But you
Speaker 1: know it, it seems it seems a little little risky.
Speaker 1: Well it it drives down just the ridiculousness I think
Speaker 1: of any wiping culture, because I feel like ultimately washing
Speaker 1: culture has the stronger argument. Um, and washing culture is,
Speaker 1: of course, instead of using even paper, what have you
Speaker 1: simply depended more or exclusively on running water or spraying
Speaker 1: water or water poured from an apparatus. That the the
Speaker 1: sort of lubricant power of water. It's taking the principle
Speaker 1: of the flush toilet to your own skin, right. And
Speaker 1: you know, this is the standard in many parts of
Speaker 1: the world, you know, particularly say in Islamic and Hindu cultures. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean you will even find this. Uh, if you've
Speaker 1: ever traveled abroad, you may have encountered this. But I
Speaker 1: have also I know people who like purchased a house
Speaker 1: in the Atlanta area and they're like, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but there's a vegetable sprayer installed next to my toilet. Well,
Speaker 1: that is it's a bid day sprayer. That's the that's
Speaker 1: the simply a means of of washing one's bum after
Speaker 1: one has defecated, and it's a rather elegant solution. I would,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, hard to argue there. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: water gets things cleaner than than without water. I mean
Speaker 1: it's not a perfect analogy, but imagine if I gave
Speaker 1: you the option of would you rather be able to
Speaker 1: take showers or just wipe yourself down with some paper
Speaker 1: towels to clean your body? Absolutely, I think most of
Speaker 1: us would probably choose the running water if it is
Speaker 1: an an option. Uh. That being said, for many of
Speaker 1: these cultures, running water is not an option. You know that,
Speaker 1: then that's one of the main reasons that you're seeing
Speaker 1: the wiping method as the primary method in these in
Speaker 1: among ancient peoples. Now, for the most part, this this worked, right,
Speaker 1: they were able to sort of roll with very simple
Speaker 1: um sewage systems. Just simply get up and move on
Speaker 1: because you're nomadic, or if you're living in a small area,
Speaker 1: just keep it on the outside of your your living environment.
Speaker 1: But the thing about humans is that we inevitably did
Speaker 1: a number of things. We overcame all of our predators.
Speaker 1: We we conquered the natural world and innovented to agriculture,
Speaker 1: and then we started more move and then we started
Speaker 1: building cities. We started building just increasingly large, cramped complex
Speaker 1: um just accretions of human population, which of course is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons we have have so many wonderful
Speaker 1: things in our culture. But also it created a lot
Speaker 1: of problems. Yeah, of course the city comes with many
Speaker 1: wonders for good and ill, and it just I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: how to deal with human waste is a major one
Speaker 1: of the ills, right, is one of the biggest problems
Speaker 1: that you immediately face as soon as you decide to
Speaker 1: create crowded, sedentary civilization. Cramming a bunch of people close
Speaker 1: together and having them all live there and not leave
Speaker 1: and what to do with human waste has long been
Speaker 1: I think one of the single most important and consequential
Speaker 1: problems in the design of human civilizations. Like think about okay,
Speaker 1: if we go with those numbers earlier, like the you know,
Speaker 1: fourteen ounces or whatever average a day, a household of
Speaker 1: five people is producing on average like thirty pounds of
Speaker 1: feces a week. An apartment building of fifty people produces
Speaker 1: like three hundred pounds a week. Obviously, people don't want
Speaker 1: that stuff hanging around. So where does it go and
Speaker 1: how does it get there? If you okay, so if
Speaker 1: you're in a city, you can't walk outside the outskirts
Speaker 1: of the city every time you need to go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and go to like a midden pile outs
Speaker 1: you know, where nobody is I mean will come back
Speaker 1: to it. To a certain extent, you can, but that's
Speaker 1: only going to scale for so long, right, Like residents
Speaker 1: of New York City cannot go to New Jersey to poop.
Speaker 1: It's just you can't leave. If you have to leave
Speaker 1: Manhattan to poop, then I mean, why you can't really
Speaker 1: live in Manhattan. And even then that's not a good idea,
Speaker 1: especially when you've got lots of people crowded around open defecation,
Speaker 1: even if it's in in a place separated from you,
Speaker 1: if it's often a midden pile or something like that,
Speaker 1: that can lead to negative health outcomes. And we'll talk
Speaker 1: about that in a bit um. But so, yeah, so
Speaker 1: you don't want all that stuff hanging around. And it's
Speaker 1: not just because we don't esthetically like the idea of
Speaker 1: feces piling up in the streets and alleys around our
Speaker 1: homes because it's gross. It can actually be dangerous to
Speaker 1: be exposed to untreated human waste, like untreated sewage. Getting
Speaker 1: into water sources is especially dangerous. This can spread water
Speaker 1: borne diseases like diarrhea, which you know is one of
Speaker 1: the biggest killers of children around the world. And in
Speaker 1: terms of infectious disease, and then like a cholera, I mean,
Speaker 1: cholera has been just one of the most awful diseases
Speaker 1: in human history and it's still kills tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of people every single year, I mean even today. And
Speaker 1: this generally is it's the fecal oral route of disease transmission.
Speaker 1: It's kind of gross to talk about, is but it's
Speaker 1: when sewage contaminates sources that end up going into people's mouths,
Speaker 1: like drinking water, like soil that you know that ends
Speaker 1: up in food um. And so for this reason, like
Speaker 1: you know, I was reading this the thing by the
Speaker 1: United Nations about the sort of their toilet initiatives trying
Speaker 1: to get toilets and clean sewage sewage disposal systems to
Speaker 1: people around the world, and and they say, bluntly, toilets
Speaker 1: save lives. We should think about that because obviously, the
Speaker 1: toilet is a nice thing to have. It's a good
Speaker 1: convenience that makes life more esthetically pleasing, but it's also
Speaker 1: like a life or death question, right, And and it
Speaker 1: is so easy to take it for granted just because
Speaker 1: it's this it's this thing that we're we're grateful for
Speaker 1: it when we have it and when we need it,
Speaker 1: but we're also very well ing to forget it and
Speaker 1: and and probably not plan our life around it too
Speaker 1: much unless we absolutely have to. Yeah, And and one
Speaker 1: way to definitely know that you shouldn't take it for
Speaker 1: granted is to think about all the people who are
Speaker 1: around the world who are deprived of these amenities. Like
Speaker 1: according to the World Health Organization and UNI SEF, about
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the global population either don't have a
Speaker 1: toilet in their home or they don't have one that's
Speaker 1: safely removes uh removes human ways. So they might have one,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't maybe it just goes into a place
Speaker 1: where it re enters drinking water areas and stuff. Among
Speaker 1: the facts they said also is that like almost nine
Speaker 1: hundred million people worldwide still regularly practice open defecation just
Speaker 1: out you know, they have to go wherever, like in
Speaker 1: a latrine field or or something like that. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: just means somewhere that is not being captured or treated.
Speaker 1: Like if you had if you had a properly dug
Speaker 1: pit latrine, that would not count. But so you're going
Speaker 1: somewhere in the open, like an open pit or something.
Speaker 1: And then this was crazy. So they say globally about
Speaker 1: eighty percent of wastewater generated by human civilization flows back
Speaker 1: into the ecosystem without being treated. Without being treated. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I mean it's just ramping around the world that this
Speaker 1: obviously is going to have be having lots of negative
Speaker 1: environmental consequences, but also negative health outcomes for humans. And
Speaker 1: then another thing that we shouldn't take for granted is
Speaker 1: like just the idea of you know, people don't like
Speaker 1: the idea of fly is getting into their their stuff. Right,
Speaker 1: So like if if people have an outhouse or a
Speaker 1: pit latrine, they tend to want to keep a lid
Speaker 1: on it. And one thing that does it helps keep
Speaker 1: flies from getting down in there and buzzing around, and
Speaker 1: of course that would be an annoyance when people are
Speaker 1: trying to use these facilities. But that's also not just
Speaker 1: an esthetic concern when when human feces are left uncovered
Speaker 1: their breeding ground for for like the fly um Musca
Speaker 1: sorbins known as the bizarre fly, which there's some evidence
Speaker 1: or a disease vector for the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatics, which
Speaker 1: can cause an infection in the eyes called tracoma, which
Speaker 1: is a leading cause of blindness around the world. It's
Speaker 1: it leads to hundreds of thousands of people being blind worldwide.
Speaker 1: So again we have we have real life consequences, actual
Speaker 1: hygiene public health consequences UH to lack of efficient UH
Speaker 1: toiletry and sewage technology. I can't emphasize this enough. The toilet,
Speaker 1: and I want to be very clear about this, and
Speaker 1: not just the toilet in your house, but the toilet
Speaker 1: paired with a waste disposal and sewer infrastructure. That's really important. Uh.
Speaker 1: Those things together are not just esthetically nice, they save lives.
Speaker 1: This is a life and death issue. Yeah. And but
Speaker 1: just to bring it back to a joke, uh, this
Speaker 1: is exactly why the sign at Ikia and the model
Speaker 1: apartment says, do not use this toilet. It's not cooked
Speaker 1: up to anything. The toilet in and of itself will
Speaker 1: do nothing exactly. And we'll revisit this theme throughout these episodes.
Speaker 1: But so without a flush toy, I guess we should
Speaker 1: sort of consider the history of toilet technology and in
Speaker 1: in consider some broad categories. Right, So, without a flush
Speaker 1: toilet connected to a safe disposal system like a sewer
Speaker 1: or a well contained septic tank, what options do you
Speaker 1: have for disposing of human waste? There are a few
Speaker 1: main categories, and they pretty much all have some major disadvantages.
Speaker 1: One of course, as we've discussed, is open defecation. That's
Speaker 1: just anywhere in the environment. We know now that's that's dangerous,
Speaker 1: That can lead to disease risks. Um. Another option is
Speaker 1: pit latrines. This is like an outhouse, you go in
Speaker 1: a hole, you know, and uh. These these are better
Speaker 1: than open defecation because they can be covered up and
Speaker 1: they can keep stuff separating contained. But also they're outside
Speaker 1: your home. You lose the convenience and the privacy. If
Speaker 1: they're inside your home, there can be problems with smells
Speaker 1: and exposure to waste. So they might be better from
Speaker 1: a health perspective than just open defecation or defecation and
Speaker 1: to say water sources, but they're also that there are
Speaker 1: problems with them that make people not prefer them generally. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you've got like chamber pots and buckets. Historically
Speaker 1: these are very common. These were often emptied by pouring
Speaker 1: the contents out of windows into city streets, which is
Speaker 1: obviously unsanitary, even though it's more convenient like you do
Speaker 1: your stuff indoors, the impact is sort of the same
Speaker 1: as like open defecation on city streets and can lead
Speaker 1: to unsanitary conditions and disease and all that. Ye like,
Speaker 1: immediately right outside your your your building. So ideally what
Speaker 1: you'd want given the limitations of all these things is
Speaker 1: some kind of appliance that allows you to do your
Speaker 1: thing inside the privacy and comfort of your own home,
Speaker 1: and then removes the waste automatically to somewhere that it
Speaker 1: can be safely stored or treated that doesn't allow unpleasant
Speaker 1: sights and smells to bother you, and doesn't allow the
Speaker 1: waste to pollute the surrounding environment or get into drinking
Speaker 1: water and soil. Obviously, this is a recipe that a
Speaker 1: that a flushed toilet could meet very nicely if it's
Speaker 1: paired with the right kind of like sewer system. But
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should take a quick break and
Speaker 1: then come back and discuss some of the solutions that
Speaker 1: ancient civilizations came up with for for toilets and seward designs.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back. So we're talking about ancient complex
Speaker 1: latrine systems. I was reading about this in a book
Speaker 1: by Brian Fagan that I've mentioned on the show before,
Speaker 1: the seventy Great Inventions of the Ancient World, and he
Speaker 1: points to one of the earliest examples we have of
Speaker 1: of latrine technology being that of a latrine drainage system
Speaker 1: in the Neolithic period. Uh one example being uh Scara
Speaker 1: bray on the Orkney Islands of Scotland from roughly thirty
Speaker 1: one hundred to b C. And the site featured six houses,
Speaker 1: each with a buried duct that drains from small toilet
Speaker 1: rooms to a single duct that removed waste from the houses.
Speaker 1: So it's it's simple, but basically in that you have
Speaker 1: the roots of modern sewage technology. Yeah, and so we
Speaker 1: see things kind of like this and other ancient civilizations
Speaker 1: like for example, one of the great UH ancient civilizations
Speaker 1: in terms of civic design and UH and technological advancement
Speaker 1: in the way cities are put together is the Indis
Speaker 1: River Valley civilization, like including sites like Mahinjo, Daro and
Speaker 1: Harapa where they had buildings with these sort of toilet
Speaker 1: holes that rested over an underground brick drainage pipe and
Speaker 1: these sewer drains could be washed out with water to
Speaker 1: carry the waste away to cess pits. Right, this would
Speaker 1: have been about And another interesting bit about the Mahenjo
Speaker 1: Darrow site is that there appeared to be channel junctions
Speaker 1: in the sewage system so that you could it could
Speaker 1: be easily be cleaned. You could go in there to
Speaker 1: prevent blockage, so it would seem to be in an
Speaker 1: advancement from from earlier designs. Yeah, and another advancement, of course,
Speaker 1: comes if you have a good source of flowing water,
Speaker 1: like the ancient Romans made use of their aqueduct supplied
Speaker 1: water to power a sort of flush toilet. I think
Speaker 1: it's not quite a flush toilet. I guess it depends
Speaker 1: on how you define it. But it consisted of in
Speaker 1: ancient Rome, basically a bench with multiple holes in it.
Speaker 1: So this would have been a very communal affair. These
Speaker 1: holes are just like right next to each other, so
Speaker 1: you'd go and sit next to a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: people and I guess just sit around talking while you
Speaker 1: were pooping. And uh. These holes in the bench were
Speaker 1: suspended over a drainage ditch with running water, and the
Speaker 1: flowing water below the toilet bench would remove the waste
Speaker 1: and it would also help limit smells. So this is great,
Speaker 1: Like you don't you know, it doesn't stink in there
Speaker 1: because stuff is getting well, it might stink a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it's not as bad as it could be because
Speaker 1: it's all getting washed away immediately by the running water. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's running water, there's there's their their their mosaics and frescoes.
Speaker 1: There is there's probably live music at some of these. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Yeah, that was a detail I
Speaker 1: was reading, and I believe it was Smith's book, um
Speaker 1: pointing out that, yeah, this would have been just kind
Speaker 1: of a fun place to hang out and have a poop. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it does seem like it was a thing that. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to like with modern Western sensibilities about
Speaker 1: like embarrassment, you know, when you when you have to
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom. It's just hard to imagine sitting
Speaker 1: around talking to people while you're all pooping on the
Speaker 1: same bench. But when in Rome, you know, poop poop
Speaker 1: on the bench. But of course this this had some
Speaker 1: limitations also because it relied on a certain kind of infrastructure, right,
Speaker 1: it relied on the constant running water supplied by the
Speaker 1: aqueduct system, and it had to be done at the
Speaker 1: end of the water supply system or else you would
Speaker 1: of course foul the water sources downstream of you. So
Speaker 1: this sort of had to you know, you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to put this toilet side at like the first place
Speaker 1: the aqueduct water supplied water gets too in the city
Speaker 1: right now. Now, certainly where we talk some more about
Speaker 1: Roman toilets here, because just the Roman plumbing situation was fabulous,
Speaker 1: it was really it was a wonderful creation. They were
Speaker 1: really proud of it too. Oh yeah. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, there's a problem with thinking too much about
Speaker 1: ancient toilets in light of our you know, our modern concepts,
Speaker 1: because you know, we're standing at the end of a
Speaker 1: long journey in which innate uh, you know, sensibilities about
Speaker 1: cleanliness are confused with concepts of purity, and they're augmenting,
Speaker 1: augmented to varying but hopefully significant degrees by public health concerns.
Speaker 1: So like, you know, for a fact that exposure to
Speaker 1: human feces can actually be a public health risk. But
Speaker 1: there's also like this weird kind of primal thing where
Speaker 1: you think of feces as morally bad or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's one of the major trends and in a
Speaker 1: Smith's book about hygiene is that these two things just
Speaker 1: become interwoven and it's hard to to to to take
Speaker 1: them apart. But the ancient understandings of public health we're
Speaker 1: very unlike our own. We've discussed before on stuff to
Speaker 1: able your mind. How Roman civil engineer Attruvious advised against
Speaker 1: building towns near marshes because of the fear of the miasma, right,
Speaker 1: which which there's some truth to that, and also just
Speaker 1: like he's coming upon truth, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: there's no magical fog that's going to come out and
Speaker 1: give you an illness. Well, he was right for the
Speaker 1: wrong reason, right, Like, so the idea that you might
Speaker 1: get malaria because there are bad smells and vapors coming
Speaker 1: off of the marshes is wrong, but it might actually
Speaker 1: be correct. So that you don't want to be too
Speaker 1: close to the marshes because the standing water produces disease vectors.
Speaker 1: The mosquitoes, they're the vector for the malaria. Now, he
Speaker 1: also advised that latrine should be positioned so that odor
Speaker 1: is directed away from public spaces. Sounds reasonable, But as
Speaker 1: Brian Fagan um at All point out in the seventy
Speaker 1: Great Inventions of the Ancient World, quote, such purely practical
Speaker 1: measures need not refle like they generalized concern for public
Speaker 1: health as we understand it, uh, you know, But for all,
Speaker 1: for all the Roman feats of plumbing, you know, it
Speaker 1: all says little about what they necessarily thought about hygiene.
Speaker 1: For instance, Fagan points out that many private toilets in
Speaker 1: Pompeii were positioned right next to the kitchen, right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It makes me think about Simpson's episode where they building
Speaker 1: ad Flanders a new house and the toilet is just
Speaker 1: in the middle of the kitchen because they're like, you
Speaker 1: haven't tried lugging a toilet up a flight of stairs.
Speaker 1: Another fact about how these Roman toilets don't necessarily like
Speaker 1: completely interlocked with common ideas about hygiene. So you wonder,
Speaker 1: what are the ancient Romans used for toilet paper? Right
Speaker 1: like when when they were sitting around by the dozens
Speaker 1: for social pooping, Yeah, where they wipers orhere they washers.
Speaker 1: There's sort of in between. There were well, I guess
Speaker 1: you call them washers because there was a water element,
Speaker 1: So they apparently wiped themselves with a kind of wetted
Speaker 1: sponge on a stick, which they So you'd be sitting
Speaker 1: there on the toilet and then in front of you
Speaker 1: there'd be a separate stream of fresh water washing in um,
Speaker 1: and then everybody would sort of dip their sponges at
Speaker 1: the end of their stick in this water to like
Speaker 1: wet it and wash it off, and then they'd wipe
Speaker 1: themselves with that and then dip it in there to
Speaker 1: wash it off again, and everybody like you would, you know,
Speaker 1: people would share these things obviously. I mean, imagine an
Speaker 1: alternate version of our present world in which instead of
Speaker 1: using toilet paper or any kind of sprayer or what
Speaker 1: have you, instead it's single use disposable sponges on sticks.
Speaker 1: You know, like we're very we're hygienic about it, but
Speaker 1: we're just so extra wasteful about it. I came across
Speaker 1: I think, what is a false factoid that I'm I
Speaker 1: wonder if I should even repeat because I don't want
Speaker 1: to spread it via the illusory truth effect, But I'll
Speaker 1: say it anyway. Uh. There there are people out there
Speaker 1: saying that the phrase getting the wrong end of the
Speaker 1: stick comes from this Roman experience, but I did not
Speaker 1: find good evidence that that is true. I do not
Speaker 1: think that is the origin of that phrase in English. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and really, what which at what end is the wrong end?
Speaker 1: It kind of depends on what you're doing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if they were like, if it's good enough
Speaker 1: for your butt, why isn't it good enough for your hand? Um?
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna come back to the Romans. But
Speaker 1: but real quick, I want to touch base again on
Speaker 1: some of these these older settlements, um, because we don't
Speaker 1: want to give the false impression that like from a
Speaker 1: very early point, from say again onward, people were just
Speaker 1: all on board with some sort of primitive sewage system,
Speaker 1: because that's not the case, because there are plenty of
Speaker 1: other advanced settlements in the ancient world. They just didn't
Speaker 1: seem that concerned with the latrine technology. Cattle hook, I
Speaker 1: believe I'm attempting to pronounce that correctly. Would this have
Speaker 1: been abrout seven thousand b C in modern Turkey. So
Speaker 1: they had mud brick houses for thousands of people. And
Speaker 1: one of the interesting things about this settlement is that
Speaker 1: most of these buildings were accessible by like sometimes like
Speaker 1: apertures in the sides of the buildings, but often ceiling holes.
Speaker 1: They had no proper streets. The rooftops were the streets.
Speaker 1: Um so so so so that's fascinating. But but then
Speaker 1: they also had they had cooking hearts, they had ovens,
Speaker 1: they had storage rooms. Uh. And yet they seem to
Speaker 1: have been just content with carrying all of their trash
Speaker 1: and ratrine latrine waste out to dumping sites, out to
Speaker 1: middens beyond the limits of their uh, their their town. Well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if the fact that the streets were positioned
Speaker 1: above the dwelling spaces actually would have discouraged them from
Speaker 1: dumping all of their waste out on the streets as
Speaker 1: often happened in other cities, because they would quickly and
Speaker 1: easily run into people's homes. Yeah, it could be another
Speaker 1: big example classical Athens may do just open sewers. Fagan
Speaker 1: adds that although the water supply was taken care of,
Speaker 1: the fifth century BC drainage system consisted of a single
Speaker 1: large duct in the marketplace, and everybody else just had
Speaker 1: to make do. But let's get back to Rome, Okay,
Speaker 1: So obviously a lot of time, in ergy and money
Speaker 1: went into the sewage system, into the overall plumbing infrastructure.
Speaker 1: We've mentioned the aqueducts already, but we haven't mentioned Rome's
Speaker 1: great central sewer, the Cloaca maxima. Cloaca maxima, that's like
Speaker 1: a body part on a Turinosaurus reaxient, but cloaca means sewer,
Speaker 1: so it's the So it's the maximum sewer, the great sewer.
Speaker 1: Um I mean, and so the to clarify the cloaca
Speaker 1: in the uh in the animal world, I think, i'm
Speaker 1: I think it's basically like a single passage way that
Speaker 1: serves the function of like a rectum and a urethra
Speaker 1: and a birth canal and all that. It's all sort
Speaker 1: of in one right and so, But but here we're
Speaker 1: talking about a great central sewer, and accounts vary on
Speaker 1: when this was built. There's there's a tradition that says
Speaker 1: that it was built in the sixth century BC, but
Speaker 1: Fagin stresses that it likely came later and may have
Speaker 1: remained an open sewer until about second century BC. But
Speaker 1: but it was a pretty impressive since the system, for instance,
Speaker 1: our for in plenty the elder was absolutely bonker balls
Speaker 1: for it. I want to read a quotation here. This
Speaker 1: is from the Rackham translation that we've used before on
Speaker 1: the show. You mean of the natural history. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is from the natural history quote. But at that time
Speaker 1: elderly men still admired the vast dimensions of the rampart,
Speaker 1: the substructures of the capital, and furthermore, the city sewers,
Speaker 1: the most noteworthy achievement of all. Seeing that hills were tunneled,
Speaker 1: and Rome, as we mentioned a little earlier, became a
Speaker 1: hanging city beneath which men traveled in boats during Marcus
Speaker 1: Agrippa's term as Edile after his consulship. Through the city
Speaker 1: there flows seven rivers meeting in one channel. These rushing
Speaker 1: downwards like mountain torrents, are constrained to sweep away and
Speaker 1: remove everything in their path, and when they are thrust
Speaker 1: forward by an additional volume of rain water, they batter
Speaker 1: the bottom and sides of the sewer. So yes, in
Speaker 1: case anyone missed it, there plenty is telling that Marcus
Speaker 1: Agrippa took a sailing vessel through the sewers. That's how
Speaker 1: amazing they were. That there's essentially a river uh that
Speaker 1: runs through Rome and it is the fabulous sewer. So
Speaker 1: this sort of toilet technology. You find this throughout the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire. Uh. And yet at the same time they
Speaker 1: still had to post warnings against public defication. So I
Speaker 1: want to touch on some of these, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: stress here that apparently in translating these, the word poop
Speaker 1: is not always sufficient. So I am going to go ahead.
Speaker 1: We're gonna go ahead and use the stronger S word
Speaker 1: for excrement. But we're going to come up with the
Speaker 1: delightful ways to bleep the profanity. This is a show
Speaker 1: of family values, folks, right, But but it also has
Speaker 1: a show about about history. And apparently these these bits
Speaker 1: of often graffiti cannot be properly translated without using some
Speaker 1: vulgar terminology. Let's vulgar, alright. So one this was a
Speaker 1: graffiti on a wall in Pompeii that says, again translated
Speaker 1: with comfort and good cheer, so long as you don't
Speaker 1: do it here. So it's a warning, please please don't
Speaker 1: poop here. Don't poop here. There are places to poop,
Speaker 1: but not here. There's a kind of beautiful irony about
Speaker 1: that being on a house at Pompeii. They want to
Speaker 1: keep all nice and clean. Yeah. Uh, there's another one.
Speaker 1: This was on a wall of a Roman amphitheater. Uh
Speaker 1: that is what is it? Cassatur cave mallum. I think
Speaker 1: it would be hard season in Latin. I think it
Speaker 1: would be cocatur cockatur cave mallum, which means roughly translated
Speaker 1: as to beware the evil eye, which is which is
Speaker 1: a delightful thing. I actually I actually saw a website
Speaker 1: where someone had had taken this thing in Latin and
Speaker 1: they framed it above their modern toilet in their apartment,
Speaker 1: which is a nice, a nice, a nice twist. So
Speaker 1: Christina Kilgrove actually wrote a wonderful article on Forbes about
Speaker 1: these inscriptions, titled uh, scatological graffiti was the ancient Roman
Speaker 1: version of Yelp and Twitter, And she points out that
Speaker 1: you know, even with with latrines, pooping was still something
Speaker 1: you were exposed to a lot. Again, they were very communal,
Speaker 1: these Roman toilets. Now, she points out that these bitsical
Speaker 1: grew graffiti were generally not found in actual latrine zones.
Speaker 1: They were found elsewhere in the city. And part of that,
Speaker 1: of course is warning against inappropriate defecation. Please go usual train,
Speaker 1: don't do it here. But then she said, there are
Speaker 1: other such inscriptions that were essentially Yelp reviews, like one
Speaker 1: that is translated as we pete in the bed, I
Speaker 1: confess we have aired innkeeper. If you ask why there
Speaker 1: was no chamber pot, that's a good excuse, except on
Speaker 1: why in the bed? Why not somewhere else in the room? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean yeah, I mean you could just use the corner.
Speaker 1: I guess It's like it would be the most destructive
Speaker 1: thing you could do, right, and since you can't, you can't.
Speaker 1: Actually you leave a Yelp review. You can just say
Speaker 1: I pet in this bed, but the reason is because
Speaker 1: you didn't provide a latrine for me to use. So yes,
Speaker 1: graffiti artists of Rome had some fun with with defecation
Speaker 1: in general and with the use of latrines. Um, the
Speaker 1: whole books have been written on Roman graffiti. It's it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful topic. But still, at the same time, we
Speaker 1: stressed that the latrines of ancient Rome, they do represent
Speaker 1: a major contribution to public health. Uh, you know, even
Speaker 1: if they didn't have the science down perfectly on everything,
Speaker 1: and even if there were a few rogues who didn't
Speaker 1: appreciate any of it. Okay, I think we need to
Speaker 1: take one more break and then we will come back
Speaker 1: to finish up our discussion about toilet history. Alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: Are we ready to get into some medieval toilet technology here? Joe, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've talked about some pit latrines, We've talked about some
Speaker 1: uh some ancient sewer systems sort of with toilets suspended
Speaker 1: over them. I wanted to talk about guard robes. So
Speaker 1: guard robes are a common solution later in like castle
Speaker 1: building periods in Europe. And there's a simple principle at
Speaker 1: work here. Why not let gravity flush for you. Uh So,
Speaker 1: a garden robe would generally be like a small room
Speaker 1: with holes that you could sit over, suspended up high,
Speaker 1: over a pit, or over an exposed area outdoors, so
Speaker 1: there could be multiple ways you would do this. But
Speaker 1: the waste would generally fall down into a pit where
Speaker 1: it would be stored and then could be removed by
Speaker 1: workers at some point, or it would fall into a
Speaker 1: moat this was pretty common for castles, or it would
Speaker 1: just fall down to the ground along the exterior wall
Speaker 1: of the castle or manor house. Uh And because of
Speaker 1: exposure to like cold winter winds, a sixteenth century poet
Speaker 1: named John Harrington, who we will revisit in the next
Speaker 1: episode called this quote sitting on the draft, So you
Speaker 1: can imagine it was like, you know, there's just a
Speaker 1: hole that's exposed to outside, and I guess your your
Speaker 1: stuff falls down along the castle wall, and and you've
Speaker 1: got the winter winds biting at your butt. Ye, your
Speaker 1: whole is exposed to the outside. This, yeah, exactly, So
Speaker 1: of course, the waste would either end up in a
Speaker 1: water source and that's not great, or it would pile
Speaker 1: up below and have to be removed by workers. And
Speaker 1: I'm not positive, but I think a guard robe type
Speaker 1: structure is the central uh architectural feature in a story
Speaker 1: that I loved about a castle I've actually been to
Speaker 1: in Slovenia. Uh. So, there's a castle called Prajamski Grod
Speaker 1: and Slovenia also known as Prajama Castle, and I've got
Speaker 1: a picture of it here. It's it's so it's a
Speaker 1: castle that was built in the thirteenth century in the
Speaker 1: mouth of a cave. Yeah, and Slovenia just generally has
Speaker 1: awesome caves and like karst geological features. But here's somebody
Speaker 1: decided to be super bad and build a castle right
Speaker 1: on a cliff at the entrance of a cave system.
Speaker 1: I like the way they think. So, You've got this
Speaker 1: guy named erasm Luger or Erasmus of Lugue, who is
Speaker 1: a so called robber baron. He's a bad dude who
Speaker 1: owns a castle, though I guess most of the people
Speaker 1: who own castles are bad. Yeah, it's kind of a
Speaker 1: red flag. Yeah, Oh, and that's something we'll get to
Speaker 1: again in a minute. Uh. So. Uh, he's a he's
Speaker 1: a so called robber baron, and he and his family
Speaker 1: Arizon Luker. Uh. They take over the Prajama Castle by
Speaker 1: the end of the fifth fifteenth century. And at one
Speaker 1: point Luger gets in trouble because he murders a relative
Speaker 1: of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the third, and the
Speaker 1: Holy Roman Empire comes to collect and they end up
Speaker 1: laying siege to his castle here at the Cave Mouth.
Speaker 1: But the siege went on and on because the castle
Speaker 1: had a secret weapon for siege survival. It had a
Speaker 1: tunnel leading into the cave system, which had other openings
Speaker 1: to the countryside, so it allowed occupants occupants of the
Speaker 1: castle to secretly sneak out and get supplies while they
Speaker 1: were under siege. And this of course means a siege
Speaker 1: can go on for a really long time for all
Speaker 1: I know. You know, it could go on forever. While
Speaker 1: the army is waiting outside to starve you out, you're
Speaker 1: sneaking off to the snack bar. So apparently somebody within
Speaker 1: the castle got sick of this after about a year
Speaker 1: or so, and the insider decided to betray Luger, the
Speaker 1: master of the castle, and I guess they must have
Speaker 1: coordinated a plan with the army outside. But however they
Speaker 1: arrived at this plan. What happened is they waited until
Speaker 1: Luger himself had to go up to the guard robe.
Speaker 1: It was this little room overhanging the outside wall of
Speaker 1: the castle, and then they raised a red flag to
Speaker 1: let the army outside know. And the army blasted the
Speaker 1: garter robe with a cannon and killed Luger in one shot.
Speaker 1: And that should have been adapted to a Game of
Speaker 1: Throne scene. Maybe it still will be. That's right, The
Speaker 1: Game of Thrones did have a death on the toilet scene.
Speaker 1: They also had the moon door, which was not a toilet,
Speaker 1: but was. It was very much like what we're describing here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a hole that opens up onto the the expanse below
Speaker 1: the castle along the castle walls. Now, one more note
Speaker 1: about medieval toilets. Generally there were two ways do you
Speaker 1: do your business in the medieval bedroom. There was a
Speaker 1: jerry which you simply pushed under the bad so this
Speaker 1: would be just like a standard chamber pot. But then
Speaker 1: there was also the closed stool, which is like a
Speaker 1: toilet box, and you'll you'll find some examples in the
Speaker 1: cushions where it's like satin cushion. It's this fancy little box.
Speaker 1: It's like imagine the fanciest um, you know, enclosure for
Speaker 1: a litter box you can purchase, and it's essentially that
Speaker 1: for human defecation, you know. I find so you look
Speaker 1: at a lot of this like medieval royal toilet technology,
Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that kings and queens of Europe
Speaker 1: would poop in, and in these times there's an awful
Speaker 1: lot of like cloth in the elements involved. It just
Speaker 1: seems like a bad idea, Like you don't want, you know,
Speaker 1: when you see people who have like toilet like toilet
Speaker 1: seat covers that are like fuzzy cloth stuff, and I'm
Speaker 1: always just like, what are you doing? Toilet should be
Speaker 1: all like hard surfaces that are easy to clean off,
Speaker 1: you know, Oh my god, it just seems wrong to
Speaker 1: like be putting cushions and fabric and all that are
Speaker 1: all over your toilet. That just seems like a recipe
Speaker 1: for disgustingness. Oh yeah. An example of this, my family
Speaker 1: wants rented a home that had a white carpet in
Speaker 1: the bathroom all the way up to the toilet is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's horrible. Like brown shag carpet. Fine,
Speaker 1: but you don't. White carpet is just a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: I mean, why don't you If you're gonna do that,
Speaker 1: why not just have like cloth dinner plates and stuff
Speaker 1: hard non porous surfaces people this, Yeah, you gotta be
Speaker 1: able to clean it all. Right, So we're gonna go
Speaker 1: and close out this episode right here, but we will
Speaker 1: be back because the next episode we're going to really
Speaker 1: get into what you probably think of as the modern toilet.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk more about the modern flush toilet, where
Speaker 1: it came from, uh, and what it's it's impact has been.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, if you want to check out more
Speaker 1: episodes of Invention, head on over to invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: That's our website. That's where we'll find all the episodes,
Speaker 1: links out to social media accounts, you name it. And
Speaker 1: I should really stress if you want to support the show,
Speaker 1: the best thing you can do is make sure you've subscribed,
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Speaker 1: do so because that that helps us out, helps the algorithm,
Speaker 1: and helps us continue to bring you week after week
Speaker 1: uh new, amazing, mundane and world changing inventions. That's right, so,
Speaker 1: as always, thanks so much to our excellent audio producer, TORR. Harrison.
Speaker 1: And if you would like to get in touch with
Speaker 1: us with feedback about this episode or any other, to
Speaker 1: suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at invention pod dot com.
Speaker 1: The reps you can sun with your day