Plumbing the Past

We all know that water is the stuff of life; most of our body is made of it and without it we wither and die in mere days. Yet how often do we think about the water? The piping hot water from our shower, water to flush away our waste, water that sustains us everyday. Generally we only think about water when we don’t have any, and if we have no water then it is all we can think about. Have you ever been really thirsty? Chances are that you have, probably when you were sick. But in all likelihood you lost no more than 2% of your bodies total water. Should you lose more than ten per cent it is likely to be fatal. Also dehydration is one of the most painful ways to die.

Civilization has thrived near water, which is why nearly all cities are built on rivers. Yet it is not enough to simply live near water. Systems have developed over thousands of years to ensure that growing populations not only have sufficient water for their day to day intake but also to remove waste from the cities so that people do not drown in their own filth.

Today water delivery is taken for granted in developed nations. We have towering skyscrapers where water is pumped through pipes hundreds of metres in the air. We have bores that tap underground streams and reserves of fresh water and pump them from hundreds of metres below the ground. Plumbing is an all-pervasive fixture of modern life yet taken for granted, so much so that you probably don’t even know what the word itself means. I know before I began research I didn’t. Plumbing comes from the Latin Plumbum, which means lead. The Chemical annotation for lead is Pb. Not surprisingly the origin of the word comes from the material that the romans built the pipes that serviced the water needs of their cities. There is widespread speculation and a swathe of evidence that supports the theory that the decline of the Roman Empire had a lot to do with Plumbism – or lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is probably one of the oldest environmental hazards of humankind yet it was only recognised as such in the late 20th century.

The need for clean water was not theoretically understood until the late nineteenth century with the rise of the Germ Theory of disease. Whilst there were a number of proponents of this theory in the 19th century perhaps it was John Snow who wrote an essay in 1849 called ‘On the mode of communication of Cholera.’ This went a long way to disprove the age old ‘Miasma Theory’ of disease. John surmised that a new water well in Broad Street London was the source of a cholera out break. He convinced authorities to remove the handle, and thus access, to the well and the cases of Cholera diminished and ceased. Recent archaeological excavations found an old cesspit mere feet from the well. Later, London authorities replaced the handle on the well and dismissed John Snow’s theory of oral-faecal method transmission of disease, labelling it as “Too depressing.”
Thankyou for reading Plumbing the past. I hope you enjoyed it.

For all of your more modern plumbing needs please contact us a http://algesterplumbing.com/ or Plumbers Brisbane Southside or Visit the Website