History of Sanitation

Synopsis of Chapter. Sanitation of Primitive Man—Early Wells-Rebekah at the Well—Joseph’s Well—The Rancho Chack. HISTORY repeats itself. The march of progress is onward, ever onward, but it moves in cycles. A center of civilization springs up, flourishes for a time then decays; and from the ashes of the perished civil- ization, phænix-like, there springs a larger, grander, more enduring civilization. Nowhere in the cycle of progress is this more noticeable than in the history of sanitation. Centers of civilization, like Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and Carthage, arose to pre-eminence in sanitary matters, built sewers, constructed aqueducts and provided for the inhabi- tants magnificent baths the equal of which the world has never since seen. After the splendors of Carthage and Rome, darkness succeeded; a darkness from which we slowly emerged in the sixteenth century and are now speeding on to eclipse the sanitary splendors of even the old Roman empire. In its broadest sense, a history of sanitation is a story of the world's struggle for an adequate supply of whole- some water, and its efforts to dispose of the resultant sewage without menace to health nor offence to the sense of sight or smell. In ancient as in modern times, water