History of Sanitation

HISTORY OF SANITATION 71 lie thickly strewn around (an English traveler counted forty close to one ferry), which accounts for the prevalence of cholera on the banks of brooks, streams and rivers. Some poor creatures drop and die by the way; others crowd into the villages and halting places on the way, where those who gain admittance cram the lodging-places to overflow- ing, and thousands pass the night in the streets, and find no cover from the drenching storms. Groups are huddled under the trees; long lines are stretched among the carts and bullocks on the roadside, then half saturated with the mud on which they lie, hundreds sit on the wet grass, not daring to lie down, and rock themselves to a monotonous chant through the long hours of the dreary night. It is impossible to compute the slaughter of this one pilgrimage. Bishop Wilson estimates it at not less than 50,000, and this description might be used for all the great India pil- grimages, of which there are probably a dozen annually, to say nothing of the hundreds of smaller shrines scattered through the peninsula, each of which attracts its minor horde of credulous votaries. Such then may be accepted as a picture of one of the numerous pil- grimages made during the Dark Ages and which helped to spread infectious dis- eases broadcast throughout the land, polluting water supplies to such an extent that in many lo- calities filth diseases became epidemic. It was not until about the end of the sixteenth century that general improvement began to be made in sanitary matters, although some notable exceptions may be mentioned in the construction of a few important works in Spain