History and Sewage: The Great Stink of 1858 

Everyone thinks that modern medicine cut the death rate and reduced suffering, and with antibiotics that is in part true. But when sewer systems and city water systems began to use chlorine to disinfect the water, their was a huge drop in waterborne diseases almost overnight. Now in the US and other modern country's that use modern three-stage sewage treatment systems these diseases are virtually non-exitant .

Sewage systems are the dividing line between a real civilization and too many people in the same place.

Craig Thompson: An interesting idea. Has such a concept ever been successfully fielded ? If it hasn't, then a research grant/PhD thesis/academic plum in general lies waiting for some bright and energetic spark. I am not mocking you. I believe in this concept of local government/community action, but hear so little on its implementation.

It is practical in rural settings as people use septic sewage systems. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septic_tank It requires a 100' leech field to allow the septic drainage to seep down into the earth. Not possible in urban settings. We live in the country and use this system. About every 6 years you have the septic tank sucked out to prevent accumulation of solids in the system. You also add bacteria monthly to the system via your toilet (Ridex or similar products).

Craig F Thompson - It gets down to economies of scale and maintenance its far to expensive to recycle water at that scale, it can be done on regional level.

Hats off to you!

A rare occasion that I can legit say "Everyone gives a shit".

Thats for what you doo doo

Thanks frank, very nice! 👍

Craig F. Thompson I think they’ll be pretty expensive plus they’ll still need people to install them and work on them so he’ll still have work

His historical accuracy is on point too, unlike most of these kinds of channels.

Yep.

@@jimjambananaslam3596 I think he is a university history professor in Illinois. I remember him saying something about it in an older video.

Please consider the Newhall Hotel disaster in Michigan.

Had a social studies teacher in high school who gave me a love for our country's history. Didn't agree with him a lot, but respected his love of country amd the fact that we needed to learn it. Wish we had teachers loke him today.

Remember he's mashing a video, not managing a class with these videos. He's also making more money on this channel than a teacher makes, based on his views and general knowledge on CPM. Nothing against him at all, I love this channel, but comparing these videos to what teachers do on a regular basis during grade school is night and day.

Waist? So the human ribcage is still in there?

It’s waste not waist

San franshithole,Kommiefornia

Modern sewer system and yet people shit on the street.

@Jim Alley --- Too late! Jerry Brown has decriminalized shitting in public. History is effectively moving backwards in California. Jerry thinks it's progress; I suggest all concerned citizens shit on his doorstep. I hate what he and his kind have done to this once-great state.

I lived there in the 90's in SOMA on a street where a detox center was. On summer days the stench on that street was just ungodly.

@IngLouisSchreurs because it's san franfestershithole,a truely disgusting place, ..i live about 50 miles away... if wind blows just right you can smell the stench .... shit,piss, puke , used needles,used condoms,ect......never go there....health hazard.( thanx gavin newscum..ex mayor,peloski's nephew)

My grandfather flew an aged Orville around in a B-25 once during the war. He was a captain at Wright field at the time. I suspect it was for publicity - maybe war bonds. I remember when i asked about Wilbur when i learned of this as a child, i was sad to hear he had died so early.

It was Boston, where he had to testify in a patent trial, and made the mistake of eating oysters from Boston Harbor.

And this past Sunday August 4th in Dayton, Ohio 9 people died because they were at a bar and a "bad guy had a gun."

They always knew what to do, The issue was HOW TO PAY FOR IT. Who would pay? As they said during the space race; "without the bucks, there wouldn't be any Buck Rodgers".

Many of the rich, influential people of London fled the city for the summer. Maybe the decision would have been quicker if they were there to lean on the politicians...

Kind of reminds me of my country's politicians and climate change action.

Harrison _ not all of it is but saying none of climate change is caused by humans is just denial

@@patmcgroin4me Climate change has been occurring for millions of years. Actual climate change scientist who disagree with current theory are being blackballed by universities all over the first world. It's a political issue, created to generate wealth.

Know shit (geddit?)

tony Good one.

Literally, Right?

I've laughed a few times today, but that one caught me off guard. Good poo!

No profit in history and knowledge. Corporations laugh at us because society predictably choose superficial value over learning history and evolving, so they come crawling back as consumers ready to throw money at any new product that claims to clean, helpful, revolutionary. Thats some history you need to learn and put a stop to.

I’m good tho

I never thought of touring but I will now

It's an interesting and important process

Sounds like a shit job.....

@Barry Ellis it doesn't matter for the USA. Their economy is in such a sinkhole, chances are the country will dissolve by the end of 2020.

@@jintarokensei3308 that's an absolutely laughable sentiment.

They only acted because the big nosed pricks in Parliament had to smell it too.

I mean, see no further than climate change and see history repeat itself.

@@thetman0068 I disagree.

Craig F. Thompson true. However that is not the only waste management challenge..

I knew about the Great Stink because of a video I ran across about a pumping station built for the new sewage system, I expect it was the Crossness station. What an amazing, beautiful piece of Victorian engineering.

Can you see modern plant being so decorated or put in a building with such architecture? Bearing in mind that most of the decoration was only seen by the Nobs opening Crossness and those running it.

History Guy is definitely the shit (in a good way)!

There was a doctor who, partly because he noticed that the guys at the brewery did not get Cholera, tracked the outbreak down to specific pump. That should have been enough to confirm germ theory versus miasma theory. But his findings were not widely accepted at the time.

In America during the westward movement everyone drank fermented cider to avoid the waterborne illnesses... The history of apples is actually very interesting.

digiprez77 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Isq1-htLiEk.html

Art Curious probably made tea drinking a significant source of clean water for most Londoners

​@@TheHistoryGuyChannel The pump was in the west end of London, John Snow noticed that many local people were catching cholera. He was a statistician who mapped the streets and houses around the pump were cases of cholera were reported, there was one abnormally a single case had been reported in the leafy suburb of Highgate several miles from the pump. John Snow followed this up and discovered the woman who contracted the disease had previously lived in the area of the pump and deemed it the 'sweetest water in London ' she would regularly send her maid down to the pump to fill bottles with the 'sweet water' John Snow knew he was on to something, but the authorities were slow to act. Solution focused John Snow removed the handle from the pump and within weeks no more cases of cholera were reported in that area. There's a pub The John Snow and The contaminated pump is located at the intersection of Broad Street and Cambridge Street (now Lexington Street), running into Little Windmill Street.

Over fishing menhaden could be another cause of red tide. Do a little research on menhaden. It is enlightening.

Sounds like chemical runoff was wreaking havoc on the local environment!

The reason that I left out Doctor Snow and the Broad Street pump is that his work was not accepted at the time. In fact, the impulse behind the new sewer system was that miasma theory still held sway.

LOL sorry- I have little control over what Google throws up for ads.

Those (very nice) Bastards!

Fact is that rain water should never flow in sanitary sewers. Heavy rain can result in flow rates that sewage treatment plants can't handle, so the excess goes direct into waterways. There have been many federally-mandated projects across the US to fully separate storm drains and sanitary sewers. This was done in my town decades ago, at significant expense, but some folks are still dragging their feet.

Jaques Blaque, The other option that some cities take if it is cheaper than separating sewage from rain runoff is to build holding capacity for when flow exceeds treatment rates during heavy rain. This is what SF did, building a giant tunnel all the way around the waterfront from the Marina District to Hunters Point, as a linear underground tank. If I remember right the project was over a billion dollars.

That's commonly called a "kludge"- an expedient that's seldom a good idea, for a variety of reasons. I'm thinking of Boston's "Peripheral Drains", their result, and what it took to finally do things right and stop ocean dumping of raw sewage. Of course, the EPA used to work for protection of the environment. It costs to separate storm drains from sanitary sewers; understandable how some cheap-out, and pay later.

My small town is gearing up for its 4th phase of sewage separation by installing huge holding tanks under the road. It’s very expensive, my utility bill has doubled in the last year to supposedly pay for the job.

Hs Hs: From what I understand in the news, San Francisco has a lot of trouble with feces ... in the streets. How can people live like that in a modern city? and perhaps more importantly, how can local governement allow that to continue? I understand that local government is finally starting to take some action but this has been going on for some time.

New video poops up. Ha ha

No sh*t Sherlock!

Gladly. Wikipedia has articles on both modern-day Bazalgettes. Additionally, the sewer programme was part of a very interesting series produced for the BBC, "Seven Wonders of The Industrial World". It also covered the Hoover Dam, and the Panama Canal. Here is some info: www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/seven_wonders_01.shtml I know you have BBC America over there, who may have shown the series, and/or have DVDs available. I also found it for sale on Amazon UK, and more expensively on the USA site: www.amazon.com/Seven-Wonders-Industrial-World-DVD/dp/B0013D8LJ0

The rich funded by tax payers...

It’s true. Politicians won’t act until it affects them personally.

That happens after every election and they just take their seats in congress...

Not true, San Fran deals with this daily.. and nothing gets done.

Hunt'n Wabbits up up

Bet there's lots more social and environmental issues we should know more about!

That still won't stop them from throwing dead people in the river, shit in it, piss in it, drop waste in it ... and then bathe in it. It's a cultural problem rather than a waste disposal problem.

WHY , ? THE GANGES HAS HEALTHY WATER .LOOK HOW THEY CLEAN THEYRE THEETH AT THE RIVER GANGES ! NOTHING HAPPEN TO THEM ! .

@@blackbelttroll4008 That's a Jim joke, right?

@@chrmez not to mention drinking the water too as it is considered "holy".

@Zio Oren Daaaang. Super edgy bro. I know you were cool in school.

Rosanne Coffman nobody cares

Just so you know; libraries are full of history books. You know, those things made of paper with printing that you actually hold in your hands and READ? However, the reading and learning requires more than a ten minute attention span. Some books don't even have...wait for it... PICTURES!!

LOL I did see in a biography that he had a grandson that was in television.

Yes, his name is Peter Bazalgette. He makes dreadful trash TV programmes.

Yes, this video is really full of sh!t! ;-)

StahlBlitz spaceship

Yes, it did. It was very popular in the 1950s.

Prostitutes were the smelliest and unhygienic people. The low live who used them didn't care about the smell as most of the time they were drunk anyway.

I think the closest we ever got to that was those Scratch N' Sniff stickers that were popular in the 80's.

I agree Man

Yes. Nikola.

Another would be the great fire of London or the great fire of Chicago.

Wes Johnston , I think he touched briefly in his video on the Great Peshtigo fire in Wisconsin (same night, just not as famous).

Joseph Bazalgette's great-great-grandson (Sir Peter Bazalgette) was the creative director of Endemol Group who made Big Brother (reality TV). Therefore Joseph pumped sh1t out of houses and then 150 years later his descendent decided to undo all of his good work and pump sh!t back into people's living rooms.

I share your opinion of reality TV!

Yes cuz let's make it about you... How is that degree doing? How long did it take you to find a job? What percentage of history majors get a job within the first year? What do they do in the mean time? Anyone can brag about sitting in a classroom, paying money, and getting over 50 percent of questions right... It's what u do with that piece of crap after. Riddle me that me joker.... I'll wait

@@joeydoink-doink742 Better a history degree than sitting on youtube trolling people.

I wonder who counted them ?

Yes, that TV series is well worth watching, the sewer one is episode 4 I think - entitled "The Sewer King". Quite an engineering marvel.

The people who sold them to them I guess.

@@thefacelessmen2101 or the guy who paid for them.

I know. I spent a summer counting them. Actually 3,489

Won't work. They're already full of it. They'll think they're among friends, lol.

Heru- deshet I was going to type just about the same comment! Great minds think alike you know!!!!😂

Verily I say unto thee, we is genasses, lol.@@williamschutz4982

Would they even notice? Politicians are known to be full of shit and imune to the stink of corruption.

@@heru-deshet359 Just seen your reply, we know them all too well!