The connection between long life and personal hygiene was an important par of Hipocratic medicine and was later popularized by scores of works on proper living, most notably those of Luigi Cornaro and George Cheyne. Cornaro’s Trattato de la vita sobria, first published in 1558, and George Cheyne’s Essay of Health and Long life, published…
Venice took the lead in measures to check the spread of plague, having appointed three guardians of public health in the first years of the Black Death. Sicily is the first part of Europe to be infected with bubonic plaque. The disease is there by October 1347. The international ports of Genoa and Venice see the…
It was fortunate, perhaps, that the first widespread epidemic which threated Europe (after the plaque of Justinian) should have been leprosy. Whether this disease was actually Biblical leprosy in more than doubtful. It bore the same name, however; and this fact made it easier to carry over into thinking of a world dominated by the…
The Edictum Rothari was the first written compilation of Lombard law, codified and promulgated 22 November 643 by King Rothari. The Edict was written down by one Ansoald, not a bishop or lawyer, but a scribe of Lombard origin. It was affirmed by a gairethinx convened by Rothari in 643. The gairethinx was a gathering of the army that passed the law by clashing…
The Baths of Agrippa (Latin: Thermae Agrippae) was a structure of ancient Rome, built by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. It was the first of the great thermae constructed in the city, and also the first Imperial Bath. Between the construction and Agrippa’s death the Baths were open to the public with an entrance fee charge. This charge was typically a quadran. Upon…
Chemical precipitation or coagulation and flocculation with various salts of aluminum (e.g., alum), iron, lime and other inorganic or organic chemicals are widely used processes to treat water for the removal of colloidal particles (turbidity) and microbes. Treatment of water by the addition of chemical coagulants and precipitants has been practiced since ancient times, even…
Sextius Julius Frontinus was appointed water inspector (Curator aquarium) in Rome, and he published the first book on water supplies entitled “De Aqueductibus Urbis Romae.” Sextus Julius Frontinus was Rome’s water commissioner (curator aquarum) at the end of the 1st Century AD under the emperors Nerva and Trajan. Frontinus’ books have made him the most…