Poop
I’m a guy, so I’m amused by toilet jokes. Heck, I’m amused by the history of bodily functions.
If you asked me before today what people did in medieval times to dispose of waste, I would have said most people had a chamber pot, and part of their daily chores was to throw out whatever was in it. Hence the saying, “You don’t have a pot to piss in,” which implies a person is so financially impoverished they can’t even afford a chamber pot.
However, I read an article today that clarified common practices during the medieval period. It described how towns were governed by a council or trade guild that issued strict rules regarding the disposal of waste. Generally, people were not allowed to throw it into the street. The smell of animal dung or tanning chemicals could fill the air, but not human waste (for the most part).
In general, people had a seat over a pit or a cesspit similar to what we think of as an outhouse (or drop pot where I grew up). More affluent families might have had a stone-lined pit, while those less affluent might have had a dirt hole. The key was to empty it, subject to the local rules, before it got too stinky.
Why were people back then such sticklers for waste disposal rules? Well, until the development of our current germ theory (around the 1880s, close to the time of the discovery of the rabies vaccine), the prevailing disease theory was referred to as miasma. Miasma was the theory that foul air spread disease (I learned this from a Washburn University class several years ago), so you can see why there might have been a desire to regulate waste disposal.
“When you are encamped against your enemies, then you shall keep yourself from every evil thing. “If any man among you becomes unclean because of a nocturnal emission, then he shall go outside the camp. He shall not come inside the camp, but when evening comes, he shall bathe himself in water, and as the sun sets, he may come inside the camp. “You shall have a place outside the camp, and you shall go out to it. And you shall have a trowel with your tools, and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it and turn back and cover up your excrement. Because the Lord your God walks in the midst of your camp, to deliver you and to give up your enemies before you, therefore your camp must be holy, so that he may not see anything indecent among you and turn away from you.” - Deuteronomy 23:9-14 ESV
It amazes me that God gave such clear direction to the Israelites as they were wandering the desert for their cleanliness and safety. We don’t realize how much of our Western civilization is dependent on God’s attention to the Israelites. They may not have understood why all the rules were important at the time, but many of them are easy to understand today.
Or, according to another saying I heard when I made a mess growing up, “Where were you spic and span when the poo hit the fan?”
