A Short History of Toilets
A short history of the Western civilization and its hygiene.
Toilets are very common nowadays. (Photoxpress)
Toilets, addressed during our everyday communication either with discomfort or ridicule, seem something natural from today’s point of view. When we have to go, we go and empty our bladder or intestines and flush. Things are not so simple in the context of history, as Julie L. Horan, author of the book Sitting Pretty – An Uninhibited History of the Toilet writes and points out, that history of the civilization did not start at the dawn of the first written word, but with the first functional crapper, at which the Western civilization was far behind. First prototypes of private rooms with specific purpose appeared in Mesopotamia 3000 B.C..
Toilets have been used since the ancient times
Ancient Egyptians and Greeks did not contribute anything significant in this field, it was the Etruscans, who, in the 7th century B.C. on the current grounds of Italy, found out that one of the main priorities of the civilized society is the disposal of human waste. Under the rule of King Superbus Tarkuinus one of the most advanced sewage systems of the antiquity was build. Ok, the Romans were familiar with the toilets, but these were available only to the upper classes, the commoners had latrines, painted with the images of gods (to ward off potential bunglers) and equipped with sponges for ass-wiping, which were used successively by many. One gladiator of Germanic origin, who did not want to be torn apart by the beasts in the Coliseum, supposedly committed suicide with one of these sponges. He stuffed it down his throat and choked.
Toilets in the Middle Ages
Until the Middle Ages and even later, people were shitting onto the streets, where crap from the provisional toilets of castle lords also flowed into, and from there the rain flushed it into a nearby river, if there was one, otherwise they just threw it over the city walls. The situation did not improve by the middle of the 19th century with the massive use of chamber pots, the gallant citizens emptied the contents of their pots swiftly through the window and shouted (or not) a warning to the passersby: »Gardez l'eau!« (Attention, water!), which transformed into loo, the English slang expression for crapper, and then into the sign 00, well known also in our country. WC, English abbreviation for water closet or flush toilets, began appearing by the end of the 19th century through innovations by George Jennings, Thomas Twyford and Thomas Crapper, »the three musketeers of toilet design«, who finalized the modern image of the toilet, the toilet bowl and the valve closet, which is used to effectively and discretely flush the smelly heap. The fact, that the name of the latter musketeer became a synonym for the toilet in English - crapper - speaks clearly of their performance.
Join us on Facebook and make sure you never miss the latest articles!
