conuly: (Default)
conuly ([personal profile] conuly) wrote2020-10-03 02:04 am

Speaking of things that irritate me

Mr. Broad Street Well has come back and told me that the pump was "of course" a well because "they didn't have piped water in those days".

I don't know if he thinks they didn't have aqueducts in Europe yet or if he simply thinks that London didn't have any municipal water system other than local wells, but either way he's wrong. The first statement is extremely wrong, and the second is just very wrong - but still, he's wrong and I have told him so. One of the ways we know our ancestors drank water is because they spent a great deal of money building and maintaining infrastructure to pipe water in to crowded areas.

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oursin: Hedgehog saying boggled hedgehog is boggled (Boggled hedgehog)

[personal profile] oursin 2020-09-29 09:09 am (UTC)(link)
The context of that famous 'Monster Soup' cartoon (I have a mug with this on) was precisely that people were routinely drinking Thames water! (is he really arguing without even looking up Wikipedia on London's Water Supply??? OMG WTF boggle)
oursin: Painting of Clio Muse of History by Artemisia Gentileschi (Clio)

[personal profile] oursin 2020-09-29 02:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Not currently running with cutting-edge historians of Victorian sanitarian interventions, but what is the book?
oursin: Brush the Wandering Hedgehog by the fire (Default)

[personal profile] oursin 2020-09-29 03:11 pm (UTC)(link)
I've never read it, but the reviewer for The Lancet was distinctly snarky and tending to dismiss it as pop history, though as he works in similar areas, may be a certain professional rivalry going on there! Other reviews tend to suggest over-simplification and prioritising telling a good story.