May 12, 2023 • 21 mins
Everyone poops. And for thousands of years, as civilizations have risen and fallen, humans have been trying to figure out exactly what to do with it all. The story of waste is one of ingenuity and class, of innovation and epidemic – and it is one that is deeply human.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Emperor hoped to end the squabbling once and for all.
Ludwig the Third, a landholding count, and Archbishop Conrad the
First were locked in a feud. You see, Conrad wasn't
being a good neighbor. At least that's what Ludwig thought.
Conrad had started building a castle near Ludwig's territory, and
it all seemed a little aggressive to Ludwig. It seemed
(00:25):
that Conrad was staking a claim in a space that
wasn't exactly his. In fact, the territory was and had
for a long time been pretty contested. So to build
a castle there was a move of confidence that didn't
sit well with Ludwig. It didn't seem fair. As the
story goes, the Emperor directed King Heinrich the sixth to
call in his trusted advisers, counts and other nobles in
(00:47):
order to convene at Saint Peter's Church in Erfurt, Germany,
in July of eleven eighty four. He wanted mediation, and
he wanted it fast. A judgment would be made on
what to do about the land, and that would fully
be the end of the story. But of course it wasn't,
but not for reasons that you might imagine as the
sixty or so noblemen ambled into the church on that
(01:09):
warm summer's day, the atmosphere was tense. There were politics
and power at play, and those at the center of
the dispute were being called in to explain themselves. The
floorboards creaked and groaned as they shuffled in to face
their boss. Everyone settled in and the king called the
meeting to order. But if anyone was worried about the
boeing of the floor beneath their feet, they certainly didn't
(01:30):
speak up. Within moments of kicking off the mediation, the
floorboards splintered, cracked, and fell out from under them. Everyone
standing there was pitched into the darkness below. But oh,
if it were only just darkness, it would have been
that much more simple. It wasn't. Instead of being dropped into, say,
an open cellar, the sixty odd noblemen met with a
(01:52):
much worse fate. They had collapsed into the church's large
communal latrine area. The latrine couldn't withstand the impact of
their flying bodies, and with that the latrine area also
collapsed in on itself, dropping their bodies down another level
into the festering cesspool of feces. There was no way
to quickly rescue the fallen. The unluckiest of folks drowned
(02:13):
when their lungs filled with human waste or were asphyxiated
by a cloak of noxious fumes. By chance, the king,
Archbishop Conrad the First and Langrave Ludwig the third survived.
Evidently they had gone off into the church's side nook
to have a private conversation just before the floor gave out,
and since they were closer to the walls, they were
able to hold onto the iron rails of the windows
(02:35):
until their cries for help were answered. If the dispute
they set out to resolve that day ever got settled, well,
that remains unclear. What's likely true is that the outcome
of this meeting was something that they could never have anticipated.
The latrine disaster remains a dark and squeamish moment in
our history, but it's true. Everybody poops. Historically, this universal
(02:56):
need has been experienced very differently, depending on the time, place,
social class, and technology of the day. At the core
of these differences, though, is a uniting truth. Sanitation and
hygiene are inextricably linked to our everyday health. It's not
always as dramatic as it was that day in medieval Germany,
but when poorly executed, the results have historically been positively deadly.
(03:20):
I'm Aaron Mankee and welcome to bedside manners. It's hard
to overstate how important poop is to humans. When we're born,
we poop. After we die, our bowels often let go
one last time, and in between those moments, the experience
(03:42):
of relieving ourselves often functions as a barometer for health,
a litmus test of our bodies basic functionality. Poop offers
important insights, but we've developed a squeamishness around this particular
mundane event. The universal experience of emptying our bowels has
long been met with silence and shame, embarrassment, and unease.
(04:02):
Those who are too casually honest about their bathroom adventures
might be given side eyes. We might scold our own
kids for their bad language, accusing them of having a
potty mouth. What goes down the loo is considered far
from polite conversation, but it wasn't always this way. The
link between bowel contents and shame is a contemporary evolution.
(04:23):
Life always follows poop in everything from oral tradition to
scholastic analysis. Cultures across the world are home to origin stories,
wherein land masses and life arises from the droppings of
mythical creatures. Take one tail from the Chukchee people of Siberia,
which describes the origin of the world resulting from a
creature known as the first Bird relieving itself. Solids became land,
(04:46):
liquid became waterwys and if folklore tells us that the
world arose from waste, some scholars believe that civilization itself
could have risen from it. Excrement is chock full of
nutrients that the soil and the critters living in it
absolutely love, and as our early ancestors spread out from Africa,
it's possible that they noticed that the places in which
they stayed longer or revisited year after year seemed to
(05:10):
be extra fertile. It's possible that these rhythms of return
gave way to farming and then to the rise of
agrarian societies. But as humans settled down, their waste began
to pile up in excess. This waste started to become
a problem. It stank and crawled with vermin. It was
clearly becoming a nuisance, and what was to be done
with it became a long adventure that occupied many of
(05:32):
our ancestors. The earliest communal restrooms can be traced in
Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Some scholars believe that
trade routes gave rise to public rest stops, which, if
you've ever been on a long road trip, is a
welcome site. Because all early civilizations rose along water sources,
depositing waste in waterways became a practical solution to a
(05:53):
stinky problem. The Minoan civilization, which thrive between twenty six
hundred and eleven hundred BC on Crete and the Islands,
has been credited as the first to do this systematically.
In fact, they've been credited with building the world's first
flushing toilets and underground waterways designed to carry their waste away.
The ancient Romans, too were known for their waste disposal,
(06:15):
but their strategizing came through utilizing cesspits, sewers, and basic
street runoffs. They eventually built the Cloak of Maxima Latin
for the greatest sewer around six hundred BC, which moved
millions of gallons of water per day. The wealthy constructed
public latrines in marketplaces, not out of the goodness of
their hearts, nor for the health of their slaves, but
(06:36):
so that they wouldn't have to step in or see
human waste across the world. In centuries later, in seventeenth
century Osaka, Japan, shimogo collectors would travel across the city
gathering what roughly translates in English to night soil. The
words most literal translation shows up as fertilizer from the
bottom of a person. They were in the business of
(06:57):
gathering human feces, bringing the waste den to the docks
and loading it into the bellies of waiting sewage ships.
From there, the boats would transport the human waste to
farmers who would compost it and transform it into incredibly
rich fertilizer. Those farmers then fed the urbanites. It was
a beautiful, albeit smelly cycle without them. Without this cycle,
(07:18):
Japan would have been a much hungrier place. Life beget
poop and poop beget life. But life doesn't always mean health.
As history tells us, we know that toilets and what
goes in them could be a profound source of illness.
But although humans did their best to keep their waste
out of sight, some lingering issues meant that it was
never out of mind. In the summer of eighteen fifty eight, London,
(07:48):
the largest and wealthiest city on earth at the time,
had a problem. It had been an unseasonably hot, dry,
and wildly unpleasant summer, so much so that it had
even won itself a nickname, the Great Stink. No one
could escape the heavy blanket of stench. Fueled by the
putrid state of the River Thames and the crumbling state
of London sewer system. The populations in areas surrounding the
(08:11):
River Thames were rapidly expanding, more than doubling between eighteen
hundred and eighteen fifty. The river had long served as
an out of sight, out of mind solution for what
to do with human waste for centuries, people depositing their
waste in it and assuming the current would just take
it all far far away. This was all compounded by
a relatively new invention that was beginning to work its
(08:33):
way into homes of wealthy Londoners, and which was later
described by some as the most life saving invention of
all time, the flushable toilet enclosed in water closets. The
water closets, which were just toilets enclosed in small rooms
discharged far more liquid into the cesspools than the average
chamber pot. And as this innovation became more and more
(08:55):
popular and people began installing more of them in their homes,
the household cesspools began to fully saturate and overflow. Soon
the streets were being flooded by these cesspools, spreading stench, vermin,
and disease. As for the poor River Thames and all
the people it served, the unusually hot summer had caused
her to dry up more than usual. What was revealed
(09:17):
in the lower water line were festering masses of hot
baking waste, and a time before germ theory became popularized,
it was believed that most diseases were borne by miasma,
or the lethal vapors given off by decaying organic matter.
It's reported that those who went too close to the
Thames suffered from fainting spells and seizure fits. Some would vomit.
(09:38):
One legend reports that a woman tried to end her
life by jumping into the river, but was first knocked
unconscious by its fumes. The government attempted to neutralize this
problem by dumping chalk lime, chloride of lime and carbolic
acid into the river, but efforts fell short. Sanitary conditions
had reached epically bad proportions, and the problem, of course,
(10:00):
was worse than just the smell. You see, London had
suffered a series of cholera outbreaks, and at that point
it was believed that cholera was contracted by inhaling bad air.
With this logic, it was assumed that the foul River
Thames was a health hazard, and it was The Thames
was likely to blame for a lot of the city's illnesses,
but not for the reasons that Londoners thought. It turns
(10:22):
out that cholera wasn't airborne, but it was wasteborn. Toilets
were becoming more popular and moving beyond the ranks of
the financial elites. More sewage was being dumped into the
River Thames day by day, even though it was often
the main water supply that people used in their homes.
It was bathing water, it was drinking water. It took
(10:42):
four decades before new, more appropriate drainage systems were engineered
and fully implemented. Toilets were beginning to catch on across
the world through the nineteenth century and cities were struggling
to keep up. Across the pond, another public sanitation crisis
was brewing. This one, though, it'd be the impetus behind
one of the greatest marvels of engineering in recent history.
(11:12):
Those who developed Chicago only had to look to Europe
to see what happens when a city grows too large,
too quickly. In eighteen fifty, Chicago's population was nearly thirty
thousand by eighteen fifty three. Just three years later, it
had doubled. In eighteen fifty four, a cholera outbreak killed
six percent of the city's population, and leaders knew that
they had to do something drastic. They knew that illness
(11:34):
was linked to waste, and it just seemed that waste
was everywhere. So when the city appointed its Board of
Sewage Commissioners in eighteen fifty five, they tasked engineer Ellis
Sylvester Chessboro to do what seemed impossible. No city in
America had a sewage system, and they wanted him to
create the first one. After striking out on a handful
(11:54):
of ideas, he ultimately settled on the final plan. The
city would need to drain the sewage into the river,
which would then be drained into Lake Michigan, diluting the
sewage and dispersing what they believed to be the disease
ridden stench. But first, in order to do this, he
would need to raise the city. Chicago was roughly sea level,
and he needed it to be higher. At its highest point,
(12:16):
the city sat only about five feet above the surrounding waterways,
and the success of Ellis's solution was predicated on his
ability to get gravity to work for him. Starting the
next year and carrying on for the next twenty, Chicago
raised its city streets anywhere from two to fourteen feet.
The new streets looked like ramps and were often level
with the second story of some homes. Many of those
(12:39):
ground floors even became cellars, and this worked according to
Ellis's plan. Things seemed to be draining as they should,
but the lake still supplied the city's drinking water, and
it became evident that widespread contamination was still only a
matter of time. In the back of his mind, he
knew this. He knew the choice was a flawed one,
but he thought it was the best one he could
(13:00):
could make given the information that he had available to
him at the time. As a more permanent solution for
handling the waste from the booming city, Ellis proposed something
much more dramatic, something unheard of. He wanted to reverse
the direction of the Chicago River entirely, sending it backward
away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi. He identified
(13:21):
a subcontinental divide just west of the city. He believed
if they could only dig a small, deep canal through it,
then gravity would do its job and carry the water away.
This idea, of course, seemed to be marvelous and to
some extent entirely short sighted. It would be a feat
of engineering, but not necessarily of sanitation. They were worried
about miasma's stench and hadn't come to understand that the
(13:43):
pathogens were in fact waterborn. It just sent the problem
to their neighbors downstream. Chicago claimed that the solution was dilution,
but downriver Saint Louis, Missouri didn't buy it. So while
the city explored its legal options, the citizens of Chicago
clamored for their clean water at last, after many years
of delays, On September third of eighteen ninety two, thousands
(14:06):
of diggers got to work. They brought their shovels, horses, wagons,
and dynamite to carve a new pathway for the river.
In all, they excavated more than forty two million cubic
yards of rock and soil to the tune of twenty
eight miles. On January Tewod of nineteen hundred, quietly and
under the cover of night, a few canal commissioners, their wives,
(14:26):
and a small number of reporters broke the final dam
connecting the canal to the des Plains River, which then
linked up with the Mississippi and then finally flowed out
into the Gulf of Mexico. And it worked. After a
few days time, the Chicago Record reported the river to
be turning blue. Some even noted the clear colored ice
that flowed by backwards. The citizens of Chicago would stop
(14:48):
to stare in amazement at what had taken place in
their city and to their water, And as they did,
they hoped for brighter and healthier days ahead. Keeping ourselves
free from waste and disease has driven us to major
technological undertakings. In the case of re routing the Chicago River,
(15:11):
more earth was moved in that effort than ever before
in human history. The machines used for excavation developed and
used in Chicago would eventually help dig the Panama Canal
just a few years later. For the city's efforts, their
problem of the build up of raw sewage and industrial
waste contaminating their city's water was solved as the construction continued.
In years to follow, new extensions of the canal were
(15:34):
also built, but of course this problem merely shifted. Those
downstream were less happy, and a host of environmental issues
developed as a result. Saint Louis continued its crusade, but
the city of Chicago denied its culpability. In the first
pollution case ever brought before the Supreme Court, Chicago defended
itself by pointing its finger at these several other cities
(15:55):
closer to Saint Louis that were discharging their waste into
their waterways. It was determined that Saint Louis had no
recourse and ended up building a filtration system for the
incoming water. Others were concerned with the diversion of fresh
water away from Lake Michigan and its surrounding areas. The
Supreme Court ruled that locks and gates had to be
installed to help control this process, but according to one report,
(16:17):
over twenty three thousand gallons of fresh water are still
diverted downstream every second. The influx of water into the
Mississippi has caused a host of other environmental disasters. It
flooded farmland, introduced invasive species, created uninhabitable environments, and brought
pollution all the way to the Gulf. But it's not
(16:37):
just Chicago, and it's not just the Mississippi River. Even today,
cities across the world still pump their wastewater untreated into
their waterways. Sometimes it's on purpose, other times these sewer
systems fail due to watery weather events. We now have
a better idea of how to manage wasteborn illnesses. We
teach small children to wash their hands and shudder when
(16:59):
we notice some one walking out of a public restroom
without doing so. But around the world, sanitation measures and
their failings are still responsible for the spread of disease
and death. The Centers for Disease Control released a study
in twenty twenty finding that two point three billion people
lacked basic hygiene services and one point six billion people
(17:19):
had access to hand washing facilities that lacked water or soap.
They went on to estimate that if everyone had appropriate resources,
access and education about hand washing, one million deaths could
be prevented each year. So don't forget to soap up
after all, clean hands save lives for something that's such
(17:44):
a benign act of the every day. It's fascinating to
know that relieving oneself has such a dynamic and complicated history.
Stick around through this brief sponsor break, and my teammate
Robin Minitter will tell you one more story about the invisible,
everyday world of newer systems.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Almost eight and a half million people call New York
City home, and you can find just about anything there,
and with that kind of density there are always bound
to be some surprises. In twenty ten, an alligator was
spotted in the streets and naturally caused a bit of
a stir, but it probably didn't cause a lot of shock.
After all, if you've spent any time there, you've definitely
heard about the legends of gators hanging out below the
(18:29):
city streets. On February ninth, nineteen thirty five, The New
York Times published a headline that read, alligator found an
uptown sewer. As the story went, a group of teenage
boys were shoveling snow down a sewer drain when one
yelled in excitement he had seen movement and told his
friends what he spotted was in fact, an alligator. The
story then goes on to report that they lasted the
(18:51):
creature with the clothes line, hauled it out, and beat
it with their shovels. At one hundred and twenty five
pounds and eight feet long, it was also now very
bare ver dead. Stories of city sewer gators can be
traced back to the early nineteen twenties. To sell copies
and turn a profit, it wasn't uncommon for newspapers to
publish hoaxes the original fake news if he will. Famously,
(19:13):
The New York Sun ran an entire series about creatures
on the Moon shock full of fake interviews and everything.
But in the case of the boy's unfortunate at gaiter,
there was a kernel of truth to be had. Their
creature was indeed real, and upon further investigation, it seems
that the gater had hitched a ride aboard a ship
coming up from Florida and accidentally gotten itself flopped into
(19:34):
the East River. Sewer inspectors themselves first reported seeing gaiters
below the streets in nineteen thirty five, the Commissioner of
New York City tenny May believed that these men were
just drinking on the job, but he went down for himself,
and he was shocked of what he found. His flashlight
showed gaiters, indeed, averaging about two feet in length. So
he set out on a campaign to rid the sewers
(19:55):
of them, and hired men with twenty two caliber rifles
to do it. Years later, he announced that they had
all been exterminated, at least the alligators underground, but the
alligators kept popping up. They were found north of Manhattan
in Westchester County, and on a subway platform in Brooklyn.
A barge captain even pulled a five footer out of
the East River in nineteen thirty seven and reportedly decided
(20:17):
to keep it as a pet. It was reported that
the Bronx River was swarming with them. An authority set
out to capture them for an installation at the zoo.
But where did all of these gators come from? You
might ask? Well, before Amazon took over, we used to
order a lot of things from the back pages of
all kinds of magazines, and in the backs of the
magazines aimed at young boys pistoled all kinds of stuff,
(20:39):
practical jokes, card games, and even baby alligators. For one
fifty at pop you could have your very own baby
dinosaur ship to you right through the US Postal Service.
It was a brisk business in those days, especially for
the kids whose parents wouldn't get them a dog. And
I'm sure that there were many parents who, upon meeting
their new room rate we usually had just gotten their
(21:01):
kid at puppy and then probably made their kid flush
their new friends down the drain.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Grimm and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by
Aaron Manke and narrated by Aaron Mankey and Robin Minitter.
Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with
research by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggerdorn and Robin Minutter. Production
assistants was provided by Josh Thain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
(21:30):
and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show,
the Grimm and Mild team and all the other podcasts
that we make over at Grimandmild dot com, and as always,
thanks for listening
The Emperor hoped to end the squabbling once and for all.
Ludwig the Third, a landholding count, and Archbishop Conrad the
First were locked in a feud. You see, Conrad wasn't
being a good neighbor. At least that's what Ludwig thought.
Conrad had started building a castle near Ludwig's territory, and
it all seemed a little aggressive to Ludwig. It seemed
(00:25):
that Conrad was staking a claim in a space that
wasn't exactly his. In fact, the territory was and had
for a long time been pretty contested. So to build
a castle there was a move of confidence that didn't
sit well with Ludwig. It didn't seem fair. As the
story goes, the Emperor directed King Heinrich the sixth to
call in his trusted advisers, counts and other nobles in
(00:47):
order to convene at Saint Peter's Church in Erfurt, Germany,
in July of eleven eighty four. He wanted mediation, and
he wanted it fast. A judgment would be made on
what to do about the land, and that would fully
be the end of the story. But of course it wasn't,
but not for reasons that you might imagine as the
sixty or so noblemen ambled into the church on that
(01:09):
warm summer's day, the atmosphere was tense. There were politics
and power at play, and those at the center of
the dispute were being called in to explain themselves. The
floorboards creaked and groaned as they shuffled in to face
their boss. Everyone settled in and the king called the
meeting to order. But if anyone was worried about the
boeing of the floor beneath their feet, they certainly didn't
(01:30):
speak up. Within moments of kicking off the mediation, the
floorboards splintered, cracked, and fell out from under them. Everyone
standing there was pitched into the darkness below. But oh,
if it were only just darkness, it would have been
that much more simple. It wasn't. Instead of being dropped into, say,
an open cellar, the sixty odd noblemen met with a
(01:52):
much worse fate. They had collapsed into the church's large
communal latrine area. The latrine couldn't withstand the impact of
their flying bodies, and with that the latrine area also
collapsed in on itself, dropping their bodies down another level
into the festering cesspool of feces. There was no way
to quickly rescue the fallen. The unluckiest of folks drowned
(02:13):
when their lungs filled with human waste or were asphyxiated
by a cloak of noxious fumes. By chance, the king,
Archbishop Conrad the First and Langrave Ludwig the third survived.
Evidently they had gone off into the church's side nook
to have a private conversation just before the floor gave out,
and since they were closer to the walls, they were
able to hold onto the iron rails of the windows
(02:35):
until their cries for help were answered. If the dispute
they set out to resolve that day ever got settled, well,
that remains unclear. What's likely true is that the outcome
of this meeting was something that they could never have anticipated.
The latrine disaster remains a dark and squeamish moment in
our history, but it's true. Everybody poops. Historically, this universal
(02:56):
need has been experienced very differently, depending on the time, place,
social class, and technology of the day. At the core
of these differences, though, is a uniting truth. Sanitation and
hygiene are inextricably linked to our everyday health. It's not
always as dramatic as it was that day in medieval Germany,
but when poorly executed, the results have historically been positively deadly.
(03:20):
I'm Aaron Mankee and welcome to bedside manners. It's hard
to overstate how important poop is to humans. When we're born,
we poop. After we die, our bowels often let go
one last time, and in between those moments, the experience
(03:42):
of relieving ourselves often functions as a barometer for health,
a litmus test of our bodies basic functionality. Poop offers
important insights, but we've developed a squeamishness around this particular
mundane event. The universal experience of emptying our bowels has
long been met with silence and shame, embarrassment, and unease.
(04:02):
Those who are too casually honest about their bathroom adventures
might be given side eyes. We might scold our own
kids for their bad language, accusing them of having a
potty mouth. What goes down the loo is considered far
from polite conversation, but it wasn't always this way. The
link between bowel contents and shame is a contemporary evolution.
(04:23):
Life always follows poop in everything from oral tradition to
scholastic analysis. Cultures across the world are home to origin stories,
wherein land masses and life arises from the droppings of
mythical creatures. Take one tail from the Chukchee people of Siberia,
which describes the origin of the world resulting from a
creature known as the first Bird relieving itself. Solids became land,
(04:46):
liquid became waterwys and if folklore tells us that the
world arose from waste, some scholars believe that civilization itself
could have risen from it. Excrement is chock full of
nutrients that the soil and the critters living in it
absolutely love, and as our early ancestors spread out from Africa,
it's possible that they noticed that the places in which
they stayed longer or revisited year after year seemed to
(05:10):
be extra fertile. It's possible that these rhythms of return
gave way to farming and then to the rise of
agrarian societies. But as humans settled down, their waste began
to pile up in excess. This waste started to become
a problem. It stank and crawled with vermin. It was
clearly becoming a nuisance, and what was to be done
with it became a long adventure that occupied many of
(05:32):
our ancestors. The earliest communal restrooms can be traced in
Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Some scholars believe that
trade routes gave rise to public rest stops, which, if
you've ever been on a long road trip, is a
welcome site. Because all early civilizations rose along water sources,
depositing waste in waterways became a practical solution to a
(05:53):
stinky problem. The Minoan civilization, which thrive between twenty six
hundred and eleven hundred BC on Crete and the Islands,
has been credited as the first to do this systematically.
In fact, they've been credited with building the world's first
flushing toilets and underground waterways designed to carry their waste away.
The ancient Romans, too were known for their waste disposal,
(06:15):
but their strategizing came through utilizing cesspits, sewers, and basic
street runoffs. They eventually built the Cloak of Maxima Latin
for the greatest sewer around six hundred BC, which moved
millions of gallons of water per day. The wealthy constructed
public latrines in marketplaces, not out of the goodness of
their hearts, nor for the health of their slaves, but
(06:36):
so that they wouldn't have to step in or see
human waste across the world. In centuries later, in seventeenth
century Osaka, Japan, shimogo collectors would travel across the city
gathering what roughly translates in English to night soil. The
words most literal translation shows up as fertilizer from the
bottom of a person. They were in the business of
(06:57):
gathering human feces, bringing the waste den to the docks
and loading it into the bellies of waiting sewage ships.
From there, the boats would transport the human waste to
farmers who would compost it and transform it into incredibly
rich fertilizer. Those farmers then fed the urbanites. It was
a beautiful, albeit smelly cycle without them. Without this cycle,
(07:18):
Japan would have been a much hungrier place. Life beget
poop and poop beget life. But life doesn't always mean health.
As history tells us, we know that toilets and what
goes in them could be a profound source of illness.
But although humans did their best to keep their waste
out of sight, some lingering issues meant that it was
never out of mind. In the summer of eighteen fifty eight, London,
(07:48):
the largest and wealthiest city on earth at the time,
had a problem. It had been an unseasonably hot, dry,
and wildly unpleasant summer, so much so that it had
even won itself a nickname, the Great Stink. No one
could escape the heavy blanket of stench. Fueled by the
putrid state of the River Thames and the crumbling state
of London sewer system. The populations in areas surrounding the
(08:11):
River Thames were rapidly expanding, more than doubling between eighteen
hundred and eighteen fifty. The river had long served as
an out of sight, out of mind solution for what
to do with human waste for centuries, people depositing their
waste in it and assuming the current would just take
it all far far away. This was all compounded by
a relatively new invention that was beginning to work its
(08:33):
way into homes of wealthy Londoners, and which was later
described by some as the most life saving invention of
all time, the flushable toilet enclosed in water closets. The
water closets, which were just toilets enclosed in small rooms
discharged far more liquid into the cesspools than the average
chamber pot. And as this innovation became more and more
(08:55):
popular and people began installing more of them in their homes,
the household cesspools began to fully saturate and overflow. Soon
the streets were being flooded by these cesspools, spreading stench, vermin,
and disease. As for the poor River Thames and all
the people it served, the unusually hot summer had caused
her to dry up more than usual. What was revealed
(09:17):
in the lower water line were festering masses of hot
baking waste, and a time before germ theory became popularized,
it was believed that most diseases were borne by miasma,
or the lethal vapors given off by decaying organic matter.
It's reported that those who went too close to the
Thames suffered from fainting spells and seizure fits. Some would vomit.
(09:38):
One legend reports that a woman tried to end her
life by jumping into the river, but was first knocked
unconscious by its fumes. The government attempted to neutralize this
problem by dumping chalk lime, chloride of lime and carbolic
acid into the river, but efforts fell short. Sanitary conditions
had reached epically bad proportions, and the problem, of course,
(10:00):
was worse than just the smell. You see, London had
suffered a series of cholera outbreaks, and at that point
it was believed that cholera was contracted by inhaling bad air.
With this logic, it was assumed that the foul River
Thames was a health hazard, and it was The Thames
was likely to blame for a lot of the city's illnesses,
but not for the reasons that Londoners thought. It turns
(10:22):
out that cholera wasn't airborne, but it was wasteborn. Toilets
were becoming more popular and moving beyond the ranks of
the financial elites. More sewage was being dumped into the
River Thames day by day, even though it was often
the main water supply that people used in their homes.
It was bathing water, it was drinking water. It took
(10:42):
four decades before new, more appropriate drainage systems were engineered
and fully implemented. Toilets were beginning to catch on across
the world through the nineteenth century and cities were struggling
to keep up. Across the pond, another public sanitation crisis
was brewing. This one, though, it'd be the impetus behind
one of the greatest marvels of engineering in recent history.
(11:12):
Those who developed Chicago only had to look to Europe
to see what happens when a city grows too large,
too quickly. In eighteen fifty, Chicago's population was nearly thirty
thousand by eighteen fifty three. Just three years later, it
had doubled. In eighteen fifty four, a cholera outbreak killed
six percent of the city's population, and leaders knew that
they had to do something drastic. They knew that illness
(11:34):
was linked to waste, and it just seemed that waste
was everywhere. So when the city appointed its Board of
Sewage Commissioners in eighteen fifty five, they tasked engineer Ellis
Sylvester Chessboro to do what seemed impossible. No city in
America had a sewage system, and they wanted him to
create the first one. After striking out on a handful
(11:54):
of ideas, he ultimately settled on the final plan. The
city would need to drain the sewage into the river,
which would then be drained into Lake Michigan, diluting the
sewage and dispersing what they believed to be the disease
ridden stench. But first, in order to do this, he
would need to raise the city. Chicago was roughly sea level,
and he needed it to be higher. At its highest point,
(12:16):
the city sat only about five feet above the surrounding waterways,
and the success of Ellis's solution was predicated on his
ability to get gravity to work for him. Starting the
next year and carrying on for the next twenty, Chicago
raised its city streets anywhere from two to fourteen feet.
The new streets looked like ramps and were often level
with the second story of some homes. Many of those
(12:39):
ground floors even became cellars, and this worked according to
Ellis's plan. Things seemed to be draining as they should,
but the lake still supplied the city's drinking water, and
it became evident that widespread contamination was still only a
matter of time. In the back of his mind, he
knew this. He knew the choice was a flawed one,
but he thought it was the best one he could
(13:00):
could make given the information that he had available to
him at the time. As a more permanent solution for
handling the waste from the booming city, Ellis proposed something
much more dramatic, something unheard of. He wanted to reverse
the direction of the Chicago River entirely, sending it backward
away from Lake Michigan and into the Mississippi. He identified
(13:21):
a subcontinental divide just west of the city. He believed
if they could only dig a small, deep canal through it,
then gravity would do its job and carry the water away.
This idea, of course, seemed to be marvelous and to
some extent entirely short sighted. It would be a feat
of engineering, but not necessarily of sanitation. They were worried
about miasma's stench and hadn't come to understand that the
(13:43):
pathogens were in fact waterborn. It just sent the problem
to their neighbors downstream. Chicago claimed that the solution was dilution,
but downriver Saint Louis, Missouri didn't buy it. So while
the city explored its legal options, the citizens of Chicago
clamored for their clean water at last, after many years
of delays, On September third of eighteen ninety two, thousands
(14:06):
of diggers got to work. They brought their shovels, horses, wagons,
and dynamite to carve a new pathway for the river.
In all, they excavated more than forty two million cubic
yards of rock and soil to the tune of twenty
eight miles. On January Tewod of nineteen hundred, quietly and
under the cover of night, a few canal commissioners, their wives,
(14:26):
and a small number of reporters broke the final dam
connecting the canal to the des Plains River, which then
linked up with the Mississippi and then finally flowed out
into the Gulf of Mexico. And it worked. After a
few days time, the Chicago Record reported the river to
be turning blue. Some even noted the clear colored ice
that flowed by backwards. The citizens of Chicago would stop
(14:48):
to stare in amazement at what had taken place in
their city and to their water, And as they did,
they hoped for brighter and healthier days ahead. Keeping ourselves
free from waste and disease has driven us to major
technological undertakings. In the case of re routing the Chicago River,
(15:11):
more earth was moved in that effort than ever before
in human history. The machines used for excavation developed and
used in Chicago would eventually help dig the Panama Canal
just a few years later. For the city's efforts, their
problem of the build up of raw sewage and industrial
waste contaminating their city's water was solved as the construction continued.
In years to follow, new extensions of the canal were
(15:34):
also built, but of course this problem merely shifted. Those
downstream were less happy, and a host of environmental issues
developed as a result. Saint Louis continued its crusade, but
the city of Chicago denied its culpability. In the first
pollution case ever brought before the Supreme Court, Chicago defended
itself by pointing its finger at these several other cities
(15:55):
closer to Saint Louis that were discharging their waste into
their waterways. It was determined that Saint Louis had no
recourse and ended up building a filtration system for the
incoming water. Others were concerned with the diversion of fresh
water away from Lake Michigan and its surrounding areas. The
Supreme Court ruled that locks and gates had to be
installed to help control this process, but according to one report,
(16:17):
over twenty three thousand gallons of fresh water are still
diverted downstream every second. The influx of water into the
Mississippi has caused a host of other environmental disasters. It
flooded farmland, introduced invasive species, created uninhabitable environments, and brought
pollution all the way to the Gulf. But it's not
(16:37):
just Chicago, and it's not just the Mississippi River. Even today,
cities across the world still pump their wastewater untreated into
their waterways. Sometimes it's on purpose, other times these sewer
systems fail due to watery weather events. We now have
a better idea of how to manage wasteborn illnesses. We
teach small children to wash their hands and shudder when
(16:59):
we notice some one walking out of a public restroom
without doing so. But around the world, sanitation measures and
their failings are still responsible for the spread of disease
and death. The Centers for Disease Control released a study
in twenty twenty finding that two point three billion people
lacked basic hygiene services and one point six billion people
(17:19):
had access to hand washing facilities that lacked water or soap.
They went on to estimate that if everyone had appropriate resources,
access and education about hand washing, one million deaths could
be prevented each year. So don't forget to soap up
after all, clean hands save lives for something that's such
(17:44):
a benign act of the every day. It's fascinating to
know that relieving oneself has such a dynamic and complicated history.
Stick around through this brief sponsor break, and my teammate
Robin Minitter will tell you one more story about the invisible,
everyday world of newer systems.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Almost eight and a half million people call New York
City home, and you can find just about anything there,
and with that kind of density there are always bound
to be some surprises. In twenty ten, an alligator was
spotted in the streets and naturally caused a bit of
a stir, but it probably didn't cause a lot of shock.
After all, if you've spent any time there, you've definitely
heard about the legends of gators hanging out below the
(18:29):
city streets. On February ninth, nineteen thirty five, The New
York Times published a headline that read, alligator found an
uptown sewer. As the story went, a group of teenage
boys were shoveling snow down a sewer drain when one
yelled in excitement he had seen movement and told his
friends what he spotted was in fact, an alligator. The
story then goes on to report that they lasted the
(18:51):
creature with the clothes line, hauled it out, and beat
it with their shovels. At one hundred and twenty five
pounds and eight feet long, it was also now very
bare ver dead. Stories of city sewer gators can be
traced back to the early nineteen twenties. To sell copies
and turn a profit, it wasn't uncommon for newspapers to
publish hoaxes the original fake news if he will. Famously,
(19:13):
The New York Sun ran an entire series about creatures
on the Moon shock full of fake interviews and everything.
But in the case of the boy's unfortunate at gaiter,
there was a kernel of truth to be had. Their
creature was indeed real, and upon further investigation, it seems
that the gater had hitched a ride aboard a ship
coming up from Florida and accidentally gotten itself flopped into
(19:34):
the East River. Sewer inspectors themselves first reported seeing gaiters
below the streets in nineteen thirty five, the Commissioner of
New York City tenny May believed that these men were
just drinking on the job, but he went down for himself,
and he was shocked of what he found. His flashlight
showed gaiters, indeed, averaging about two feet in length. So
he set out on a campaign to rid the sewers
(19:55):
of them, and hired men with twenty two caliber rifles
to do it. Years later, he announced that they had
all been exterminated, at least the alligators underground, but the
alligators kept popping up. They were found north of Manhattan
in Westchester County, and on a subway platform in Brooklyn.
A barge captain even pulled a five footer out of
the East River in nineteen thirty seven and reportedly decided
(20:17):
to keep it as a pet. It was reported that
the Bronx River was swarming with them. An authority set
out to capture them for an installation at the zoo.
But where did all of these gators come from? You
might ask? Well, before Amazon took over, we used to
order a lot of things from the back pages of
all kinds of magazines, and in the backs of the
magazines aimed at young boys pistoled all kinds of stuff,
(20:39):
practical jokes, card games, and even baby alligators. For one
fifty at pop you could have your very own baby
dinosaur ship to you right through the US Postal Service.
It was a brisk business in those days, especially for
the kids whose parents wouldn't get them a dog. And
I'm sure that there were many parents who, upon meeting
their new room rate we usually had just gotten their
(21:01):
kid at puppy and then probably made their kid flush
their new friends down the drain.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Grimm and Mild Presents Bedside Manners was executive produced by
Aaron Manke and narrated by Aaron Mankey and Robin Minitter.
Writing for this season was provided by Robin Miniter, with
research by Sam Alberty, Taylor Haggerdorn and Robin Minutter. Production
assistants was provided by Josh Thain, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams,
(21:30):
and Matt Frederick. You can learn more about this show,
the Grimm and Mild team and all the other podcasts
that we make over at Grimandmild dot com, and as always,
thanks for listening
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