History of water supply and sanitation
[14] The Mesopotamians introduced clay sewer pipes around 4000 BCE, with the earliest examples found in the Temple of Bel at Nippur and at Eshnunna,[15] utilised to remove wastewater from sites, and capture rainwater, in wells.
A number of the other houses of the acropolis had burnished brick bathing platforms, that drained into a covered brick sewer, held together with a gypsum-based mortar, that ran to a soak pit outside the towns walls, while the lower town offered soak jars (large buried urns, with a hole in the bottom to permit liquids to drain), the latter of which were regularly emptied and cleaned.
[26] Sewage was disposed through underground drains built with precisely laid bricks, and a sophisticated water management system with numerous reservoirs was established.
Water from the roof and upper storey bathrooms was carried through enclosed terracotta pipes or open chutes that emptied out onto the street drains.
Ruins from the Indus Valley Civilization like Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan and Dholavira in Gujarat in India had settlements with some of the ancient world's most sophisticated sewage systems.
[52] As the Islamic Golden Age waned and in later times, both Arab and European scholars criticised the condition of canals, streets and waterways at certain urban locations in Egypt.
The Egyptian physician Ali ibn Ridwan wrote in the 11th century "the people of al-Fustat are in the habit of throwing whatever dies in their homes ... out into the streets and alleys where they decay, and their corruption mixes with the air. ...
[69] In Dubrovnik, then known as Ragusa (Latin name), the Statute of 1272 set out the parameters for the construction of septic tanks and channels for the removal of dirty water.
However, most cities did not have a functioning sewer system before the Industrial era,[citation needed] relying instead on nearby rivers or occasional rain showers to wash away the sewage from the streets.
[citation needed] In some places, waste water simply ran down the streets, which had stepping stones to keep pedestrians out of the muck, and eventually drained as runoff into the local watershed.
[citation needed] In the 16th century, Sir John Harington invented a flush toilet as a device for Queen Elizabeth I (his godmother) that released wastes into cesspools.
[74][14] In Spain and Spanish America, a community operated watercourse known as an acequia, combined with a simple sand filtration system, provided potable water.
[80] London water supply infrastructure developed over many centuries from early mediaeval conduits, through major 19th-century treatment works built in response to cholera threats, to modern, large-scale reservoirs.
Archaeological discoveries have shown that some of the earliest sewer systems were developed in the third millennium BCE in the ancient cities of Harappa and Mohenjo-daro in present-day Pakistan.
[84] The tremendous growth of cities in Europe and North America during the Industrial Revolution quickly led to crowding, which acted as a constant source for the outbreak of disease.
[86]: 33–62 As part of a trend of municipal sanitation programs in the late 19th and 20th centuries, many cities constructed extensive gravity sewer systems to help control outbreaks of disease such as typhoid and cholera.
As recently as the late 19th-century, sewerage systems in some parts of the rapidly industrializing United Kingdom were so inadequate that water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid remained a risk.
He made a careful and exact survey of Liverpool and its surroundings, involving approximately 3,000 geodetical observations, and resulting in the construction of a contour map of the town and its neighbourhood, on a scale of one inch to 20 feet (6.1 m).
From this elaborate survey Newlands proceeded to lay down a comprehensive system of outlet and contributory sewers, and main and subsidiary drains, to an aggregate extent of nearly 300 miles (480 km).
The Paris cholera epidemic of 1832 sharpened the public awareness of the necessity for some sort of drainage system to deal with sewage and wastewater in a better and healthier way.
During the half-century around 1900, these public health interventions succeeded in drastically reducing the incidence of water-borne diseases among the urban population, and were an important cause in the increases of life expectancy experienced at the time.
He experimented with a piped distribution system initially proposed by James Vetch[99] that collected sewage from his factory and pumped it into the outlying farms, and his success was enthusiastically followed by Edwin Chadwick and supported by organic chemist Justus von Liebig.
[96]: 29 During the half-century around 1900, these public health interventions succeeded in drastically reducing the incidence of water-borne diseases among the urban population, and were an important cause in the increases of life expectancy experienced at the time.
The precursor to the modern septic tank was the cesspool in which the water was sealed off to prevent contamination and the solid waste was slowly liquified due to anaerobic action; it was invented by L.H Mouras in France in the 1860s.
"[106] Contact beds were tanks containing an inert substance, such as stones or slate, that maximized the surface area available for the microbial growth to break down the sewage.
[133] The technique of purification of drinking water by use of compressed liquefied chlorine gas was developed by a British officer in the Indian Medical Service, Vincent B. Nesfield, in 1903.
This might be accomplished in two ways: By liquefying it, and storing it in lead-lined iron vessels, having a jet with a very fine capillary canal, and fitted with a tap or a screw cap.
For example, in the camel caravans that crossed Central Asia along the Silk Road, the explorer Owen Lattimore noted (in 1928), "The reason we drank so much tea was because of the bad water.
[142] In the 19th century, Britain was the center for rapid urbanization, and as a result, many health and sanitation problems manifested, for example cholera outbreaks and pandemics.
[143] The investigations of the physician John Snow in the United Kingdom during the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak clarified the connections between waterborne diseases and polluted drinking water.
