[HN Gopher] The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)
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The Myth of Medieval Small Beer (2017)
Author : _vk_
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-05-19 05:18 UTC (1 days ago)
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| resolutebat wrote:
| I'm not entirely sure I buy this argument. There are vast swathes
| of the world today where drinking tap water will likely make you
| sick, and in all these countries it is standard procedure to boil
| tap water before drinking it. In fact, in eg China & Indonesia,
| cold water (even if clean) is believed to be bad for you and
| drinking still warm boiled water or weak tea instead is very
| common. Was medieval England really an exception?
| deepsun wrote:
| And in all of those places you'd usually noted how bad is the
| taste of water, so many people knew it's unsafe not just from
| tradition, but also from the bad taste. The difference between
| now and medieval England is that we know taste is not
| everything, that even "sweet water" can be dangerous unboiled.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > And in all of those places you'd usually noted how bad is
| the taste of water, so many people knew it's unsafe not just
| from tradition, but also from the bad taste.
|
| Considering the strength of the Chinese taboo on cold water,
| I find that fairly unlikely.
| kergonath wrote:
| We often say that the US are not the world and that we
| should not assume that something is natural just because
| American do it. Well, it's also true for China and overall
| people in a specific place having a specific taboo tells us
| very little about human health or their understanding of
| it.
|
| So no, a Chinese taboo on cold water does not tell us
| anything about a human tendency to drink water any more
| that a people's taboo about pork is any indication that
| pork is unsafe (yes, this also is an urban legend).
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| People in a specific place having a specific taboo can
| tell us a lot about how likely they are to engage in the
| tabooed behavior. The argument was that people in China
| would have noted the bad taste of their raw water. In
| order to do that, they would have had to drink it, which
| I find unlikely.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| You're comparing England from ~800 years ago to modern day
| countries. That hardly seems fair.
|
| There's a lot of knowledge we take for granted that simply
| hadn't been discovered yet in medieval times.
| refactor_master wrote:
| But humans have been cooking stuff for thousands and
| thousands of years to improve nutritional value and kill off
| bacteria. Why would water be an exception?
| anthk wrote:
| Water evaporates and people would think twice before
| 'losing' it.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Bacteria wasn't known about thousand of years ago. Nor were
| nutrients (in the sense that we know it now).
|
| There are a plethora of other reasons food might have been
| cooked, not least of all being flavour. The fact that it
| also killed bacteria would have been an accidental benefit.
|
| Also a lot of food actually loses nutrients when cooked.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| I think you're underestimating humans who for hundreds of
| thousands (!) of years have been as smart as you and I.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's pretty well documented during the Middle Ages that
| people thought it was the smell that made them ill and
| not any bacteria
| neuronerdgirl wrote:
| And smell and bacterial levels are absolutely correlated
| hnlmorg wrote:
| They are. But the solution to each might be different.
| And given the specific argument being contested here is
| whether beer was drank because it was considered safer,
| understanding their motives is pretty fundamental to that
| discussion.
| scarby2 wrote:
| The motives don't always have understanding of the root
| cause however. We knew that eating raw meat was unsafe
| even though we didn't know about salmonella.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That's exactly my point. This whole conversation is about
| whether beer was drank because water was unsafe.
| Understanding what their understanding of "unsafe" was,
| and what they considered the remedy, is central to this
| discussion.
| kergonath wrote:
| Being smart and knowing stuff are not equivalent. The
| smartest person alive 300 years ago had no clue about
| bacteria and viruses. Or anything like horizontal gene
| transfer. Sure, they were not _stupid_. They still did
| not know a lot of things, which occasionally made them do
| stupid things. For example, it is well documented that
| people believed diseases were transmitted by "bad air"
| (i.e. pestilence, or bad smells) up until the mid-19th
| century (not to mention demons). They were not stupid,
| but there were some things they did not know.
|
| I am not saying that we are any better; there are a lot
| of things we don't know that will be taken for granted in
| 200 years. If there is still a human race.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > For example, it is well documented that people believed
| diseases were transmitted by "bad air" (i.e. pestilence,
| or bad smells) up
|
| But that's not particularly stupid. Bad smells are
| certainly a proxy for diseases to some extent and
| avoiding them/removing their sources would also decrease
| the likelihood of getting sick.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Bacteria wasn't known about thousand of years ago. Nor
| were nutrients (in the sense that we know it now).
|
| And yet, processed like nixtamalization (the processed
| used to make the nutrients in maize available to humans)
| were discovered over 3000 years ago.
|
| If ancient humans figured that complex process out, they
| certainly would have been able to figure out that boiling
| water made it safer to drink, even if they didn't know
| why. They'd probably just claim it killed the evil
| spirits or pleased the water god and have been happy with
| that explanation.
|
| If someone is going to go through the process of boiling
| water, they might as well throw some stuff in there and
| turn it into soup/tea/broth/stew/whatever so that it
| tastes nice and makes you less hungry.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Ancient cultures relied on observation-based trial-and-
| error knowledge passed down from generation to
| generation, mostly involving people dying. They didn't
| have to understand the causes in order to be correct
| about the effect. E.g., if you eat raw meat that's been
| sitting there a while, you get sick and might die. How do
| we know? Because X and Y people died after eating it. But
| if you cook it, you don't get sick and don't die. How do
| we know, because A and B people cooked it and didn't die.
| Thus -> cook meat. Why? Who knows what unscientific
| reasons they would give (likely superstitious ones). But
| "discoveries" of this sort were passed down, in the same
| way that they discovered which mushrooms not to eat (by
| people dying when they ate them).
|
| Same applied to which local sources of water were safe to
| drink (i.e., people didn't die when they drank from
| there), and whether fermented drink (i.e., beer) was
| safer than water.
| resolutebat wrote:
| What, boiling water? The Chinese have been drinking tea for
| thousands of years.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| You don't make tea to kill bacteria. You make it because of
| the flavour.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Sometimes people do things for a certain reason but it
| can also have other positive effects. In a way, it
| doesn't matter why a trait or behaviour spreads, as long
| as it's beneficial.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't disagree with your sentiment but the literal
| topic of conversation here is the "why" part.
|
| Sometimes conversations can have practical applications.
| Other times they're just academic for academics sake. But
| both are perfectly fine conversations to have.
| resolutebat wrote:
| Porque no los dos? And as noted, in China drinking hot
| water is common, while drinking cold water is
| (traditionally) frowned on.
| dmoy wrote:
| Yea but for routine consumption, drinking exclusively hot
| (boiled previously) water wasn't as much of a thing,
| especially in Northern China, prior to like mid 1800s.
|
| It was after a particular outbreak (cholera?) somewhere in
| the 19th century that hit northern China way worse than
| southern China that they figured out the major difference
| was the hot water habits in the South. Even in the 1930s
| there was still a push to increase boiled water usage.
| legitster wrote:
| I feel like some of these debunkings need debunking!
|
| I don't think anyone is truly arguing that medieval people
| _never_ drank water. But they did drink beer in quantities that
| would be untenable today.
|
| The author is also muddling points - medieval people didn't have
| to understand microbiology to know that beer was safer to drink.
|
| And it was! Not only would the brewer have access to better
| water, it would be boiled as part of the process. (And aromatics
| like hops acted as mild antiseptics - the beer would be safe to
| drink for as long as it tasted well).
|
| To review:
|
| - It was tasty
|
| - It was convenient
|
| - People you knew who drink it had the trots less often
|
| - It was cheap enough
|
| - It made you feel good during long days of arduous labor
|
| - There was no social stigma so long as you don't get drunk
|
| And it makes plenty of reason that brewers would be incentivised
| to keep ABV low so people could drink it all day if they could.
|
| Even going into the US prohibition, I think people would be
| astonished by how much the typical worker drank (usually cider in
| the US). With workplaces themselves providing it by the
| truckload.
|
| Yes, people drank water. But (especially in urban settings) they
| drank A LOT of low abv drinks.
| card_zero wrote:
| You're just shoehorning in the assumption that people had
| diarrhea a lot, because that's the trope about medieval Europe.
| But if everybody lives in a well-established traditional way
| (and there's no current war or plague in the area) then they
| will also know by tradition the springs, streams and wells that
| yield clean water.
|
| In Georgian times, around 1800, coal-based industry gets under
| way, there's a population explosion, and many cities have
| properly horrific slums, latrine courtyards ankle deep,
| families living with pigs in wet cellars, graveyards
| overflowing ex-human slurry into the street. This is also when
| we invent bottled water, and if you can't get that, beer is a
| good option for safety reasons.
|
| But in calmer medieval times, avoiding the local water can't
| have been so crucial, because the locals probably knew where to
| get the clean-ish stuff (however harmlessly brown or
| wriggling).
| resolutebat wrote:
| Natural springs are rare, while streams and rivers are often
| muddy, seasonal and/or contaminated by domestic animals and
| wildlife. There's a reason wells were very common.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Well water is not safe either. It's exposed to the
| atmosphere, so to dust, birds (both s(h)itting and flying),
| and insects, etc.
|
| Depending on the shape and structure of the well, rats can
| crawl inside, and lizards, and cockroaches and other
| insects can crawl in anyway, and poop there. and we all
| know about rats as a vector of many serious diseases, like
| the plague in said mediaeval times.
| anthk wrote:
| Even "natural springs" could give you tons of diarrhea due to
| some animals taking a dump nearby.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Yep, thought of that as soon as I read the parent and GP
| comments.
|
| And I have also thought of the same point on my own before.
|
| And it's not just:
|
| >could give you tons of diarrhea due to some animals taking
| a dump nearby.
|
| But also: from _all_ the way upstream (from aquatic animal
| life), _and_ from the upstream watersheds (from terrestrial
| animal life), which, all together, is a shit-ton of dumps,
| pun not intended.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Yes. Another corroborating comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40413484
| closewith wrote:
| People have diarrhoea a lot today, in developed countries
| with stable access to clean water and food. If anything,
| people massively underestimate the amount of diarrhoea
| premodern living involved.
| scarby2 wrote:
| >People have diarrhoea a lot today, in developed countries
| with stable access to clean water and food
|
| My personal experience suggests it's pretty uncommon. Maybe
| once every few years, and I eat all sorts of questionable
| things.
| taneliv wrote:
| Do you have, or live with children?
| closewith wrote:
| 179 million acute cases pa in the US [https://wwwnc.cdc.g
| ov/eid/article/28/11/22-0247_article]. Probably an order
| of magnitude more unreported cases.
| fransje26 wrote:
| >> But if everybody lives in a well-established
| traditional way (quoted from card_zero's comment)
|
| > 179 million acute cases pa in the US
|
| I don't think the US diet qualifies..
| bartonfink wrote:
| Your personal experience must invalidate large parts of
| the diarrhea filled lives many others before you have
| lived and died. Thanks for chiming in, wise one.
| kergonath wrote:
| I would suggest your personal experience is not
| representative of what billions of people are living e.g.
| in Nigeria and most of tropical Africa and India.
| rexpop wrote:
| What a tedious over-inflation of personal significance.
| It's utterly depressing that literate people such as
| yourself could be so unimaginative as to presume the
| representative significance of your own experience.
|
| Although they're less common among the insufferably
| narcissistic rich, diarrhoeal diseases account for 1.5
| million deaths, annually ranking them as the 8th leading
| cause of death globally.[0]
|
| 0. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/the-
| top-10-...
| jeltz wrote:
| I also almost never have it but I would never presume my
| experience to be iniversal.
| legitster wrote:
| > they will also know by tradition the springs, streams and
| wells that yield clean water
|
| I once drank water from a mountain stream and spent a week
| sick from some sort of phage associated with beavers.
|
| As any avid hiker can tell you, even crystal clear, pristine
| surface waters still run the risk of making you sick. Even
| without the need of human intervention.
|
| Almost every human culture has some traditional drink that
| involves something boiled. It's weird to assume Europeans
| were magically different.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Giardiasis is often referred to as the "beaver fever"
| because the organism completes part of its lifecycle in
| mammals and beavers crap wherever they eat, which is in the
| water.
| fuzztester wrote:
| >With workplaces themselves _providing it by the truckload_.
|
| Also probably doing that to keep them working there longer too.
| legitster wrote:
| Still a tradition in some parts of the world!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass_barrel
| kybernetikos wrote:
| Sounds a lot like the role coca cola plays today, with tourists
| drinking it in preference to water they don't know as well as
| just wide drinking of it because it's tastier than water.
| cardanome wrote:
| > Yes, people drank water. But (especially in urban settings)
| they drank A LOT of low abv drinks.
|
| The vast majority of people in the medieval period did NOT live
| in cities.
|
| Furthermore the cities that did exists where way less densely
| populated and would more look like bigger villages to the
| modern eye.
|
| It is the modern world with it's industrialization and high
| population density that has the problem of getting safe fresh
| water. People have images of Victorian London in their head not
| realizing that is way, way past the medieval era and way into
| our modern era.
|
| The vast majority of people in the medieval period had access
| to safe drinking water. They also probably met most of their
| hydration needs from directly consuming safe water sources.
| While it was common to brew your own beer and people did so a
| lot, I think the economics required for everyone to be able to
| consume multiple liters of beer every day would have been a bit
| too much.
|
| As for did medieval people prefer drinking beer when given the
| choice? Many people today would rather drink soft-drinks or a
| beer even when having access to perfectly safe tab water. So I
| agree that might be more plausible.
| legitster wrote:
| While cities were smaller, I think people forget the inverse,
| which is that rural areas were much more densely populated.
| The farms were very small, required lots of labor, and were
| always close to the manor of a lord or parish. Which almost
| invariably had a bakery, brewery, and a well present. These
| services were very convenient to the average peasant, and I
| was surprised to learn how few medieval homes even had a
| hearth or oven for baking.
|
| Even in the preindustrial days, you could not just grab water
| from any old surface stream and drink it raw without _some_
| risk (as any avid hiker could tell you). Even the most
| crystal clear stream will have some sort of wild animal
| refuse in it that could leave you sick for days.
|
| We know that early settlers in America basically refused to
| drink the local water except when forced. Even going back to
| the Roman period, where they were obsessive about fresh
| water, even _then_ the average peasant might be drinking
| posca (vinegar water) all day instead of water. Roman troops
| would make and haul the stuff around with them rather than
| risk local water on the march. So I think it would be weird
| to assume there was a middle medieval period where the water
| was always pristine and everyone drank it.
|
| > Many people today would rather drink soft-drinks or a beer
| even when having access to perfectly safe tab water.
|
| I mean, if you went to a jobsite today, I would not be
| shocked if less than a third of what people drink during the
| course of the day is tap water. But if I may posit something
| - the average person's distaste for drinking plain water is
| somewhat universal across time and cultures and _might very
| well be a human adaptation._
| cardanome wrote:
| Having access to fresh water is not the same as saying any
| puddle of water was 100% safe.
|
| You bring up traveling when the vast majority of people did
| not travel. At all. Maybe to the next market if we talk
| later medieval period but that was it really. (I do use
| bottled water when traveling because I am only used to the
| local bacteria and it is easy to get sick at first when
| going to a new country.)
|
| As you write most settlements especially early one were
| very self-sufficient. So they would have some source of
| water that could be safely consumed. Remember, even for
| beer brewing you need to start with clean water. Sure
| heating it up helps with bacteria but you can't brew beer
| with dirty swamp water. It will be gross.
|
| The whole antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jews poisoning
| the well only works if people were actually drinking from
| the well. Not that antisemitism needs to be very rational
| but it shows that people had a considered safe source of
| water they regularly drank from.
|
| > But if I may posit something - the average person's
| distaste for drinking plain water is somewhat universal
| across time and cultures and might very well be a human
| adaptation.
|
| I don't think hunter-gatherer societies where big on beer
| brewing. The whole building settlements thing is a very
| recent innovation in evolutionary terms so probably not
| enough time has passed for such a trait to become relevant.
|
| Plus I mean our brains like sugar and carbohydrates very
| much, we quickly learn to crave alcohol and coffee. We can
| already explain why people might drink something else than
| plain water.
| legitster wrote:
| If we both went into a time machine, and had to make the
| choice, I think both of us would still end up drinking
| the small-beer over even the most pristine local water.
|
| But regardless, this is still not a strong argument that
| we need to "debunk" the history as the original author is
| trying to do. We have written primary sources from the
| dawn of writing until the modern temperance movements in
| the 1800s that all basically say the same thing - humans
| in any agricultural society ended up supplying the
| majority of their hydration from prepared sources of
| water. Access to clean water was about bathing, preparing
| food or drink, and the _occasional_ drink of water.
|
| Regardless of how safe their water was or was not to
| drink, medieval people still ended up drinking small-beer
| a majority of the time if they could help it.
| sophacles wrote:
| > The whole antisemitic conspiracy theory of Jews
| poisoning the well only works if people were actually
| drinking from the well.
|
| Not really. Independent of people drinking directly from
| the well:
|
| * animals are watered by getting the water from the well.
|
| * food is prepared with water from the well
|
| * ale is prepared with water from the well
|
| and so on. All of these things would subsequently be
| poisoned if the well was poisoned. They needed a safe
| source of water, but that does not imply that they drank
| it directly.
| watwut wrote:
| > Even the most crystal clear stream will have some sort of
| wild animal refuse in it that could leave you sick for
| days.
|
| When you are local never ever moving out of place you do
| know what is upstream or in well. This "had no idea cows
| are up there" thing is modern hiker problem.
|
| > the average person's distaste for drinking plain water is
| somewhat universal across time and cultures and might very
| well be a human adaptation.
|
| There is absolutely nothing universal about that. Instead,
| drinking water seems to be universal accross cultures.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| > Roman troops would make and haul the stuff around with
| them rather than risk local water on the march.
|
| it's more than this: posca or sekanjibin or switchel or any
| of the other similar vinegar drinks are a bit like savory
| gatorade: you will preferentially choose them when exerted
| and they're available, they're better regardless of
| sanitation.
| sdwr wrote:
| Well, I must be a 19th century mill worker, because you're
| making me want cheap, low ABV cider provided on tap by my
| employer
| jfengel wrote:
| An additional advantage:
|
| - It had calories
|
| That was the original purpose. It's a way of preserving grain.
| Food was a constant struggle for most, and they required every
| single scrap that they could lay their hands on.
| riffraff wrote:
| > medieval people didn't have to understand microbiology to
| know that beer was safer to drink
|
| what did they need to understand? At various points in history
| people thought it was a good idea to drink mercury or use dung
| to cure toothache.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > And it makes plenty of reason that brewers would be
| incentivised to keep ABV low so people could drink it all day
| if they could.
|
| Still true in modern times. I'm not even sure it's possible to
| get drunk on Bud Light. Light rice beers have always been
| clearly intended to be drunk all day. I worked at a convenience
| store in a trashy neighborhood in the 90s, and the same people
| who had just bought a case a few hours ago would come back in
| for the next case, dead sober.
| schmidt_fifty wrote:
| > Again, this was not a disease control issue, as there was no
| notion of separating wastewater from spring water for health
| reasons -- it was simply a matter of taste.
|
| The idea that "there was no notion of separating wastewater from
| spring water for health reasons" is complete bullshit. The
| dirtier the water, the more need to boil the water. Boiling the
| water would not have significantly improved the taste. Some
| streams were known to be unhealthy despite not appearing dirty
| and locals knew to boil this too. Springs and deep wells were so
| highly valued in part because these were known to be safe to
| drink without any processing. European records are full of people
| being prosecuted or just directly murdered for messing with
| spring or fountain water. The idea people would not connect the
| taste of the water (which was quite well observed) with health is
| not born out by records of the time. Laws on the books dictated
| where one might bathe, wash clothing, rinse unhealthy flesh, and
| especially where one might piss or shit, specifically concerned
| with causing widespread disease. In siena in 1262 a woman was
| flayed alive after she was accused of poisoning fountain water--
| not dirtying it, but specifically destroying its safety.
|
| The reason people drank beer is the same as today: it's tasty, it
| makes you feel good, you get some calories, and water is "boring"
| unless you're really thirsty. Plus it was "packaged" and ready to
| drink in town
| ggm wrote:
| "12 years in a monastery" (1897) by Joseph McCabe mentions the
| astronomical amount of beer drunk by monks, as a matter of
| routine (albiet in the late 19th century)
|
| He was one, before he went over the wall and became a proto
| socialist free thinker philosopher.
| AnthonBerg wrote:
| Went to take a look; There's beauty in it. Thank you!
|
| Here, for others' convenience:
| https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Twelve_Years_in_a_Monastery
| fuzztester wrote:
| Reminds me of Trappist monk beers, that I have read about, but
| not tried.
| namaria wrote:
| I don't understand this type if historiography where "medieval"
| is an adjective used as if it refers to a very well defined time
| and place.
|
| Anything medieval can refer to up to a thousand years of history
| and several dozen polities.
| snowpid wrote:
| yes i does say lots about the audience where we discuss mostly
| England as an example.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _As it happens, drinking water was commonplace throughout
| history. We have to remember that the notion that water could
| carry diseases is a fairly modern one_
|
| No, it's anything but new. People in the past might not know
| about viruses and bacteria and such, but they very well knew
| about clean vs dirty water, the dangers of some animal corpse
| upstream, and many other such things...
|
| Ancient people had knowledge from experience of far more
| intricate subjects than "polluted water can kill you", without
| having to know the mechanisms involved.
| jeltz wrote:
| Yeah, otherwise why would well poisoning be an ancient
| practice?
| rabbits_2002 wrote:
| this website is getting dumber by the day
| haunter wrote:
| Agreed. That's why I started using flags more liberally.
| frereubu wrote:
| This is a great podcast about how Victorian London built a huge
| sewer system to deal with the vast amount of human waste
| generated by one of the biggest cities in the world:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001gjcm
|
| I was reminded of it by the mention of people who collected the
| waste from cess pits, which is also in the podcast - it was
| transported outside the city and used for fertiliser.
| vram22 wrote:
| Only partly related (London), but reminds of that striking
| image called Gin Lane, by Hogarth.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Street_and_Gin_Lane
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Bourbon street, 10pm vs 2:30am
| larsga wrote:
| This article is right, but also misleading. Yes, people did drink
| water. But they preferred to drink beer, and basically they drank
| beer for thirst if they could. And they did this not just in the
| Middle Ages, but into the 20th century.
|
| I wrote [a blog post](https://www.garshol.priv.no/blog/433.html)
| that goes into this in more detail.
| cardanome wrote:
| Your blog posts doesn't discuss the medieval era at all though.
| You are strictly talking about modernity.
|
| The medieval period ends around 1500 AD. A time where the vast
| majority of people lived in small villages. This is when
| population density was very low and the industrialization
| hasn't happened yet. Cholera is a modern problem. Water
| pollution is a mostly modern problem.
|
| So yes, you are right that water safety was an huge issues in
| the modern era (end still is is in many regions of the world).
| Not sure about always preferring beer as I haven't looked
| deeper at the evidence but it is hell more plausible than for
| the medieval period.
| doingtheiroming wrote:
| There's a line in one of the Aubury Maturin books, Clarissa Oaks
| when pumping the ship bilges, a sailor remarks, "she flows as
| clear and sweet as Hobson's conduit".
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson's_Conduit
|
| Fresh water was consumed in prodigious quantities in the Royal
| Navy, not least for watering down grog but also for extracting
| the salt from salted meats.
| pjlegato wrote:
| Other way around -- grog wasn't so much diluted with water as
| the grog was applied TO the fresh water as an antiseptic.
|
| Fresh water on ships had typically been sealed inside a barrel
| for months or even years before it was consumed, growing all
| manner of unhealthy pathogens. Pre-germ theory people read this
| as "it smells and tastes bad," which is a pretty good first-
| order approximation of germ theory.
|
| When you cut that contaminated water with alcohol, that greatly
| reduces illnesses from drinking it, especially in those whose
| GI systems are already somewhat adapted to tolerate the
| pathogens. Strong spices in grog such as cloves also helped
| mask the taste of drinking years-old barrel water.
| im3w1l wrote:
| So it sounds to me like they knew:
|
| 1. Various contiminants make water taste bad. 2. Bad tasting
| water is unhealthy.
|
| It's not a full theory of microbiology of course, but it's
| something.
| mattclarkdotnet wrote:
| OK this one I do know about, as the school I went to in London
| was founded in 1619. The "poor scholars" who were the original
| pupils had a ration of 5 pints of ale per day - one with
| breakfast, two with lunch and two with dinner. This is all
| recorded in the accounts from the time. It was presumably very
| weak
| bluGill wrote:
| Citation needed. Too much that sounds good but could just be
| cherry picking.it also seems like there should be better evidence
| in various records.
|
| of coures the claim they drank small beer alse needs citation.
| nevinera wrote:
| These types of posts are .. well thought-out, and usually posted
| by someone with relevant education. But they are not reviewed
| documents or journal articles, and you can _tell_ when someone is
| mixing in a lot of their own educated guessing with the research
| they've done. Which is the case here.
|
| He probably wasn't intending it to be taken as authoritative
| source, but that's how most people will _read_ something like
| this after running into it on the front page of HN. And most of
| this is just.. guesswork.
| legitster wrote:
| The author is presenting a plausible enough theory without any
| evidence that it is actually more accurate than the actual
| historical texts.
|
| As one example, the author goes on and on about the importance
| of the conduits into London - but here's how actual documents
| from the time describe them:
|
| "A certain conduit was built in the midst of the City of
| London, so that the rich and middling persons therein might
| there have water for preparing their food, and the poor for
| their drink"
|
| Kind of an important bit of context to leave out!
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