El desconocimiento preventivo de la paternidad

burn the ground. He noted that human urine was better for young shoots

and especially good if it was aged for six months when, if used as a fertilizer,

it would create lusher fruit and vine crops with better flavour. He �so

describes

a

form of composting made by mixing 'sewer filth' in a trench with

ashes, straw and any other 'dirt' that could be gathered around the home (Columella 1941: 195, 196, 199, 201).

Night soil was collected from Roman cesspits22in domestic residences by manure merchants and sold to fanners on the outskirts of towns, and to city gardeners as a fertilizer. This private trade was regulated and taxed by Vespasian23 (Hodge 1992: 336, 476; Scobie 1986: 408, 411, 415; Friedlander: 1913: 284). Where high response fertilizers were required, night soit urine and other manures such as pig dung and olive waste :were diluted with water before application (White 1970: 130). This says nothing of the

elaborate water systems and sewers developed by the Romans in Rome and in their colonies, culminating in the Ooaca Maxima built in the sixth century Be. While water became abundant in many places with the arrival of the grandiose water schemes, often sewers were not connected to water closets in tenements, especially above the first floor and not at all to crowded dwelling houses. So the large proportion of the urban population depended on the scavengers and manure merchants to remove their domestic 'ordure' from cisterns at the bottom of stairwells. Alternatively they simply took their personal waste to the neighbourhood dung heap. Failing that, it was thrown into the street which impelled the administrators to pass laws against the practice (Mumford 1961: 216; Carcopino 1956: 50). Excreta management practices were effectively abandoned with the fall of Rome and 'cities and towns were virtually open sewers' (Bassow 1976: 23). The collapse of any

• sanitary system was the precedent for the excreta management practices

followed in Europe until the 19th century.

2.9.2 Excreta and Sanitation in Britain and France

From a Western perspective it is important to trace the heritage of the

. development of attitudes and practices relating to human excreta

management. The events in Britain and France helped to shape the policies of public health administrators in the colonies, and the debates that raged in places like Australia and the USA mirrored the debates on the causes of disease and the best way to resolve the sanitary problems that had developed through increased urbanization and public neglect. However, wherever there were human excreta available there were always people prepared to utilize them as a valuable fertilizer in cultivation. There was a

.. . . .. 22 Cesspit.or cesspool is a pil or cislern for. receiving gre wate: and contents of a or water closet.

!Jole dUg.ID the ground (pII) known as a rrudden. or a cesspool If used for excreta . . 23

Vl!spaslan was Roman

emperor from 7()"79 AD.

time in Britain when the main method of removing excrement from dwellings was through dry conservancy, and much of that excrement eventually found its way to farms and gardens.

2.9.2

(a) Odours of urbanization-conditions in Middle Ages London and the problem of night soil

The degeneration of the Roman Empire was also expressed in the decline of any systematic means of collecting and disposing of human excrement. This left a legacy in its European colonies for many centuries, and conditions in London and Paris reflected an acceptance of the sights and smells of human excrement in both public places and private nooks and cranies that can now only be imagined or experienced in densely populated urban areas in countries like India. Nevertheless, up until the twelfth century in pre­ industrial centres in Britain and France, the waterways, animal scavengers such as pigs, and household gardens probably coped reasonably well with re-cycling the production of household garbage and human excrement. Since there was minimal provision for excreta management, by the late Middle Ages, British and French towns were 'virtually open sewers' (Bassow

1976: 23;

Reid

1991: 9, 10).

With the increasing concentration of populations in urban centres and the lack of space and gardens, people urinated and defecated wherever they

• could.

Or, as had been practiced in Rome, human excreta was simply

thrown into the streets. The 'black death' of

1349

and similarly intermittent episodes of plague may have aroused concern about the unsanitary

conditions of London streets, since the epidemic was capable of

extinguishing life regardless of status or wealth. Following the 'black death' in

1349

which possibly killed between

50%

and

75%

of the population, the plague had recurred from time to time destroying the lives of many more

. people (Singer et al.

1958: 504, 505;

Shin

1986: 88;

Bassow

1976: 23;

Mumford

1938: 170).

Much of London's human and animal dung as well as domestic garbage eventually reached the Thames via the streets, and the town ditch which was constructed in

1211.

The Fleet River24 was reportedly clogged in

1355

from the discharge of eleven latrines and three sewers. The fleet ditch which surrounded the walls of London was completed in

1233

and proceeded to fill up with rubbish dumped by Londoners living on its banks to extend their

plots for gardens, and human and animal excrement which had been piled or dumped in the streets and backyards eventually washed into the ditch and other waterways. The rich concoction must have provided a fertile medium for crops. The wealthy had privies or garderobes built into their houses which often emptied into the nearest watercourse (McLaughlin 1971: 27-28; Mayhew 1968: 389; Sim Van der Ryn 1980: 18).

Ineffectual ordinances were passed to achieve more hygienic conditions, such as the proclamation of Richard 11 in 1388:

INFECTIONS

For that so much Dung and Filth... be cast and put into Ditches, Rivers and other Waters, and also within many other Places, within, about and nigh unto divers Cities, Boroughs and Townes of the Realm, ... that the

air

there is greatly corrupt and infect, and many Maladies and other intolerable Diseases do daily happen, as well as to the Inhabitants, Dwellers, Repairers and Travellers aforesaid .... that Proclamation shall be make as well as in the Citie of London, as in other Cities, Boroughs and Townes, Through the Realm of England, that all that do cast or throw any such annoyances, issues, dung, intrails or other ordure in Ditches, Rivers and Waters, he shall cause them to be removed ... and carried away .... upon pain to lose and forfeit to our Lord the King 20 pounds (Palmer 1973: 19).

However, this royal edict obviously had little effect, even on subsequent sovereigns. Charles the second and his court, who after enjoying the 1665 • summer in Oxford, were reportedly not inclined to seek solace in places to

defecate and urinate where their excreta would not offend:

Though they were neat and gay in their apparel, yet they were nasty and beastly, leaving at their departure their excrements in every comer, in chimneys, studies, coalholes, cellar (Kira 1976: 195).

It was not until the early 18th century in France that faeces were cleared

weekly and regularly from the royal palace in Versailles, and the palace of

the Spanish royal family in Madrid did not have one privy installed in 1772 (TIlich 1986: 46, 47).

The best that authorities could recommend to control the situation was to 'retire a bow's shot away from human habitation' (Palmer 1973: 19, 21). Writing in 1745, Jonathan Swift in his advice to the chamber-maid and the ; house-maid, recommended that the Lady's chamber pot should be emptied

out of the window to prevent the 'Men Servants to know that fine Ladies have Occasion for such Utensil' and:

Never empty the Chamber-pots until they are quite

full:

If that happens in the Night, empty them into the Street; if, in the Morning, into the Garden; for it would be an endless Work to go a dozen Times from the Garret and upper Rooms, down the Back-sides (Swift 1959: 53, 61).

Although written in sharp irony, it does indicate the preferred locations for depositing the products of ones 'worst necessities'.

Meanwhile, human excrement was 'recklessly dump�d into rivers and tidal waters' and untreated sewage from privies and open sewers polluted the drinking wells of the poor in the emerging industrial cities and towns (Mumford 1938: 170).

The sanitary situation in Britain and France did not really change until the 19th century. A universal acceptance of sanitary conditions and toiletry habits, unimaginable in developed countries today, prevailed. Facilities ranged from none, to designated dungheaps, to privies. By the mid 19th century, Chadwick reported in the "The Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Population of Great Britain" that there was:

... not a street, not a court or lane or approach that was not disgustingly defiled by human ordure-here were houses whose yards were completely covered with human ordure 6 inches deep across which inhabitants stepped on bricks' (Finer 1952: 219).

In poor communities overcrowding was common, and many houses had no excreta management provision at all.

In

these situations, occupants used the streets to defecate and urinate. If provision was made for human excrement, an open pit was dug in a garden or courtyard as a rubbish and excreta receptacle, which usually served to overflowing the many dwellings that surrounded the 'midden' or cesspit. If a privy was provided, it would often . be utilized by families in up to 40 tenements. Unpaved streets often oozed

from overflowing cesspools, middens and drains (Sidwick 1976a: 66; Altick 1973: 66).

Convictions were still regularly being handed down in Manchester for people emptying chamber pots and slops into the street from windows and doors in 1845.

In

the late 1860s many poor people were living crowded together with rubbish and excrement stored inside the house during daylight hours (Wohl 1983: 92). A 19th century ballad aptly describes

When Good Queen Victoria came to the throne Very little of 'germs' and 'bacilli' was known. And a cesspool lay lurking beneath every stone. Oh! The old smells of old London

And oh! The old London old smells (Sergeant

1888-89: 350).

During an unprecedented drought in

1858

'the old smells of London' became the 'Great Stink' of London, which descended on the houses of parliament that stood beside the Thames River. While the debate that raged that year (behind parliamentary windows and doors hung wi� cloth soaked in bleaching powder to keep out the smell) failed to resolve the issue of moving parliament to a place that was less olfactorily offensive, it did highlight the seriousness of the situation to the people with the power to act (McLaughlin

1971: 148;

Seabloom and Carlson

1986: 61).

Nevertheless there were some who were utilizing the mounting midden and manure piles and overflowing cesspits for fertilizer. In Chadwick's report he wrote in a deprecating tone of the people who emptied cesspools for free on the edge of town for manure and of the proprietors 'who deal in dung', selling cartloads of manure from the numerous dunghills in Britain that often

had a public privy attached (Chadwick

1842: 119).

Although the purpose of

the report was to highlight and find solutions to the appalling insanitary conditions under which most working Britons lived, it also managed to illustrate the vibrant trade being conduded in all kinds of 'filth' including

• human excrement. In some ways the people in Britain and France who plied

a trade in human excrement manure or used it as a fertilizer resembled the manure merchants and peasants in China who had been actively engaged in the collection, marketing and utilization of human excrement for centuries. However, in Britain and France they were considered of low status unlike their counterparts in China.

2.9.2

(b) Chinese influences on European practices

It is obvious that the Chinese probably influenced the agricultural practices of other lands within its geographic sphere such as Japan, Korea, Vietnam and the Northern parts of what is now India and Pakistan. It is less obvious that the Chinese could have directly influenced practices in post Roman Europe.

However,

!here are

a number of written accounts by European traveller.; ;n

,

Chin

a over the centuries who were somewhat in awe of the Chinese

,

t'_

inclination to systematically scavenge superfluous matter including human

In document Acción de impugnación de paternidad matrimonial del hijo biológico y de la madre natural dentro del matrimonio (página 79-84)