Читать книгу History of Sanitation - J. J. Cosgrove - Страница 6

Table of Contents

Synopsis of Chapter. Sanitation of Primitive Man—Early Wells—Rebekah at the Well—Joseph's Well—The Rancho Chack.

History repeats itself. The march of progress is onward, ever onward, but it moves in cycles. A center of civilization springs up, flourishes for a time then decays; and from the ashes of the perished civilization, phœnix-like, there springs a larger, grander, more enduring civilization. Nowhere in the cycle of progress is this more noticeable than in the history of sanitation. Centers of civilization, like Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and Carthage, arose to pre-eminence in sanitary matters, built sewers, constructed aqueducts and provided for the inhabitants magnificent baths the equal of which the world has never since seen. After the splendors of Carthage and Rome, darkness succeeded; a darkness from which we slowly emerged in the sixteenth century and are now speeding on to eclipse the sanitary splendors of even the old Roman empire.

In its broadest sense, a history of sanitation is a story of the world's struggle for an adequate supply of wholesome water, and its efforts to dispose of the resultant sewage without menace to health nor offence to the sense of sight or smell. In ancient as in modern times, water was the chief consideration of a community. Centers of population sprung up in localities where water was plentiful, and where for commercial, strategetic or other reasons, a city was built remote from a water course, great expenditures of labor and treasure were made constructing works to conduct water to the city from distant springs, lakes or water courses. Ruins—still standing—of some of those engineering works give us some idea of the magnitude of the water supply for ancient cities belonging to the Roman empire.

Rebekah at the Well

In the early days of primitive man, sanitation was among his least concerns. He obtained water from the most convenient source, and disposed of his sewage in the least laborious way. Those who lived in the vicinity of streams solved the problem by moving to the bank, where, like their more highly civilized descendants of to-day, they drew water from the up side of the stream and returned the sewage to the water to pollute and possibly contaminate it for their neighbors lower down.

Communities living remote from natural water courses soon learned the value of wells as a source of water supply. Many mentions of wells are made in the Book of Genesis, and it is affirmed by Blackstone that at that period wells were the cause of violent and frequent contention; that the exclusive property or title to a well appeared to be vested in the first digger or occupant, even in such places where the ground and herbage remained in common.

While this statement might be true of many instances, there can be no doubt that public wells were dug even in those remote times. Indeed, the first mention made of a well, in the Book of Genesis, would indicate that its waters were free to all. Abraham's oldest servant, Eliezer, had been entrusted with the duty of selecting a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac. The servant journeyed to the ancient city of Nahor, and there "he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening that women go out to draw water." And he said: "Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water, and let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camel drink also; Let the same be she that Thou hast appointed for thy servant, Isaac. And it came to pass that Rebekah came out, and the damsel was very fair to look upon, and she went down to the well and filled her pitcher, and the servant said, Let me I pray thee drink a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord, and when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camel also. And she hastened to empty her pitcher in the trough and ran again unto the well to draw water for all the camels."

In Assyria and Persia from earliest times, water has been conveyed to towns from astonishing distances in open channels, and in Egypt, also in China, gigantic works for conveying water both for domestic use and for irrigation have been in existence from remote antiquity. In China, a knowledge of the art of well drilling has existed for centuries. Travelers speak of wells drilled by Chinese, centuries ago, to a depth of 1,500 feet.

In the valley of the Nile are many famous wells. Joseph's Well[1] at Cairo, near the Pyramids, is perhaps the most famous of ancient wells. It is excavated in solid rock to a depth of 297 feet and consists of two stories or lifts. The upper shaft is 18 by 24 feet and 165 feet deep; the lower shaft is 9 by 15 feet and reaches to a further depth of 132 feet. Water is raised in two lifts by means of buckets on endless chains, those for the lower level being operated by mules in a chamber at the bottom of the upper shaft, to which access is had by means of a spiral stairway winding about the well.

Well at the Rancho Chack

In America, the use of wells as a means of water supply is of great antiquity, dating back to pre-historic races. In the United States, along the valley of the Mississippi, artificially walled wells have been found that are believed to have been built by a race of people who preceded the Indians. Primitive tribes that lived in the hills sometimes had their ingenuity taxed to provide a water supply. In the hills or mountains of Yucatan, at Santa Ana, in the Sierra de Yucatan, there exists a well of great antiquity that shows the difficulty under which the aborigines labored in their search for water. The well is located on the Rancho Chack. It is not known whether this well was constructed by hand labor or is one of the numerous caverns in the rock, fashioned by the boundless forces of nature, and with which the hills abound. Water is reached after descending by ladder a distance of over 100 feet and traversing a passage 2,700 feet long or about half a mile in length. The rocky sides of the tunnel are worn smooth by the friction of clothes or bodies brushing against the surface, and the roof of the tunnel is black from soot and smoke from countless torches that have lighted water bearers to the spot where a pool of clear, lukewarm water bars the passage. How many centuries this little subterranean pool has supplied water to the natives of this region there is no means of ascertaining. The well is used at the present time, and perhaps when Carthage was a village, Rome a wilderness, and Christianity unthought of, this little pool of water hidden in the bowels of the earth and accessible only after traversing a dark, slippery, perilous passage, was to the Indians of that locality what the old oaken bucket was to the New England villagers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

ANCIENT ROMAN FOVNTAIN AT CORINTH

GREEK PEASANTS WASHING CLOTHES

From Stereograph, copyright 1908 by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

(See page iv)