Doctor Curmudgeon A Foul History

By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist

Let’s travel back to the Rome of 500 BC—or not.

Those were the days of the foricae, the public bathrooms of Rome. Before the foricae were built, slaves and commoners would urinate and defecate in the streets. The elite of Rome found this extremely offensive. And so, out-of-the-way, dimly lit communal toilets were built for the poor.

With the advent of foricae, the patrician class was now spared the sight of plebeians relieving themselves.

The foricae were built over streams which carried the waste away from the city into nearby rivers. They were long structures, benches with holes in them.

You placed yourself over a hole which was separated from its neighboring hole by a stone slab.

The toilets were communal gatherings. And so, if you were one of the common people in ancient Rome, you would be sitting a few inches away from someone else. You could socialize with your neighbor, chat about current events, exchange dinner invitations. You might find it more difficult to relieve yourself if you happened to be seated next to someone you did not like.

In this cooperative setting, you shared the same wiping tool. These implements were tersoria–sea sponges on sticks. They were used and then reused. No reaching for a clean sheet of toilet paper, it was “Hey, buddy, pass the sponge as soon as you finish.”

These early Roman public toilets were indeed filthy. After all, these were dark places and someone could easily miss the hole, making the stone around the hole a disease carrier. And the floor must have been soiled and quite slippery.

You could even suffer a bite from a spider that was attracted to this early public bathroom, or a rat could crawl up from the foul conduit beneath you. And snakes liked to slither about.
On the plus side, you didn’t have to ask for directions to the bathroom. It was only necessary to follow your nose.

Ann Olga- Koloski-Ostrow, an anthropologist from Brandeis University was interviewed by the Smithsonian magazine. She spoke of the togas providing privacy protection, “the clothes they wore would provide a barricade so you actually could do your business in relative privacy, get up and go. And hopefully, your toga wasn’t too dirty after that.”

And what about hand washing? Sometimes there was a communal amphora in which you could dip your hands. Or not.

Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon

Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com

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