How people pooped in the Middle Ages

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Urine was necessary for tanning leather, and so was dog excrement (aka “pure”) which was collected from the streets right up to Victorian times.

The gentleman villein with the shovel is a gong farmer. The job was relatively well paid, but still for some reason not considered high status.

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We’ve been doing that here in Australia.

It’s been local news that COVID has been detected in the sewage in Adelaide, even though there’s been no local cases.

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There is a real two story outhouse in San Juan Batista, California: San Juan Bautista, CA - Two Story Outhouse

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Apparently the process can pick up evidence even from asymptomatic sufferers. I first heard about it in Italy, it seems a sensible method for checking the health of a population.

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University of Colorado dorms were put on quarantine last fall after Covid was detected in the wastewater.

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Using the piss of a redheaded boy to quench steel.

So, who ran that experiment?

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I read an interesting article that started off with death reports being consistently recorded (hi coroners) which then pointed out that a LOT of people in the middle ages died of drowning, and then conected it to them dropping trow(spelling proably) near a stream to defecate, and falling in (slippery mud, drunk, etc) and not being able to get out because heavy wool clothing + water and not knowing how to swim is a bad combo…

tl:dr outdoor pooping is dangerous if you’re wearing wool

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I couldn’t watch more than a few second of those fade-cuts and I turned off the video. Glad to know I’m not the only one who was annoyed by that.

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Huh, it’s gross to me that people had a predeliction to shit into running water even before indoor plumbing made it the norm. Of all the non-weapon “western” innovations, I think normalizing defecating in water that’s been treated so we could drink it might be one of the worst.
But duly noted: I will be careful not to shit outdoors into a river while wearing wool! :joy:

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