Tuesday, January 9, 2018

NO ANCIENT ROMAN WAS EVER ALONE
BECAUSE PLUMBING SPREAD WORMS, LICE



THE good news is that Romans had indoor plumbing centuries before the rest of the world had running water and flushing toilets.

The bad news is that Ancient Rome's toilets, baths, aqueducts and sewage systems those public baths and shared latrines spread intestinal parasites and body lice.

People in the pre-historic times as well as in the Dark Ages who had to make do without plumbing actually had fewer worms and lice than the Romans.


The findings are contained in an article in the latest edition of Parisitology journal by Piers Mitchell, an archaeologist at the University of Cambridge.

Mitchell surveyed parasite numbers from latrine archaeological sites, in mummified remains and in fossilized feces before and after the implementation of Imperial Rome's hygiene projects.

The data suggest that roundworms and other parasites that spread through contact with feces maintained their numbers despite sanitation efforts ... perhaps because Romans used human feces to fertilize their crops and rarely changed the water at some public bath houses.


Romans also had no toilet paper, instead sharing a sponge-on-a-stick.

Fish tapeworm was even more common in Roman times that in the Bronze or Iron Ages, Mitchell claims.

He attributes to the popularity of GARUM, a fermented fish sauce in ancient Rome.

Regular bathing throughout the Empire also appears to have done little to curb populations of ectoparasites like head lice. 

2 comments:

  1. The aqueducts provided fresh water, but the plumbing was made of lead, so that later Romans had symptoms of lead poisoning, for example the ability to taste salt, as reflected by massive amounts of salt in Roman cookbooks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks for posting this info. I just want to let you know that I just check out your site and I find it very interesting and informative. I can't wait to read lots of your posts. plumber

    ReplyDelete