For what purpose would you willingly use raw water? Drinking? Cooking? Bathing? Join Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Jordan Watney, as they look at more instances of raw water usage, both in the past and modern history (including some history humanity is making right now). Learn how John Snow, one of the founders in the field of epidemiology during a period when Miasma theory was prevalent, found Patient Zero in 1854 after cesspools contaminated raw water supplies with cholera. How did raw water help bring an industry to the point of economic collapse around 1925? In what ways have history and modern natural disasters impacted the current safety of raw water in Puerto Rico?

 

As this journey through the history of raw water comes to the present, and with a better understanding of the progression of water safety, a brief examination is made of some current events relate to raw water contamination. Discover how wells dug by the United Nations to prevent exposure to surface water bacteria created debilitating new problems for […]

Α reconstructed appearance of Myrtis, an 11-year-old girl who died during the plague of Athens and whose skeleton was found in the Kerameikos mass grave, National Archaeological Museum of Athens

Just how pure is your raw water source? Do you trust it? Would you drink it? Join your Horrific History co-hosts, Eric Slyter and Jordan Watney, as they take several trips in the Horrific History time and space machine to look at cases in history when trusted water supplies turned deadly and how some earlier societies handled water quality concerns. Learn how waterborne diseases can help determine the outcome of a war, encourage societies to develop regulations on industry and even kill already starving settlers in a new (to them) land. We’ll also take a brief look at how people have viewed and measured water quality through history (hint: up until recent history water quality was assessed only by human senses), and natural contaminants which can be harmful (or deadly) when you’re drinking water to achieve that healthy glow.

 

How did scientists prove that typhoid helped determine the outcome of the Peloponnesian War between the Spartans and the Athenians around 430 BCE, and what conditions allowed it to help wipe out an estimated 1/3 of the population in Athens? Is it true that people in the middle ages only drank beer instead of water because the quality was so bad? What made the water so toxic […]