New World, as well. As Francis Chapelle has described, despite readily available water in New England, the Pilgrims sought other drinks.
Drinking water—any water—was a sign of desperation, an admission of abject poverty, a last resort. Like all Europeans of the seventeenth century, the Pilgrims disliked, distrusted, and despised drinking water. Only truly poor people, who had absolutely no choice, drank water. There is one thing all Europeans agreed on: drinking water was bad—very bad—for your health.
If not water, then what did people drink? The answer in ancient times often was alcohol. The drink of choice in Egypt was beer, and in ancient Greece wine. It may not be surprising that one of the very first buildings constructed in Plymouth Plantation was a brewhouse.
More common, though, was a mixture of water with another substance. Sometimes this was alcohol. The fifth-century Hippocratic treatise “Airs, Waters, Places” recommended adding wine to even the finest water. Beer was routinely added to water (called “small beer”) in the Middle Ages. Water was also commonly mixed with vinegar, ice, honey, parsley seed, and other spices. This both improved the taste and served as a status symbol. The mixtures elevated the status of what otherwise would have been a common drink. After the discovery of the East Indies, mixing hot water with coffee and tea became popular.
It is interesting to note that none of these mixing practices was consciously intended to make the water safer to drink, though this often may have been the result. Alcohol added to water retarded and even killed microbes. While India Pale Ale may now be all the rage in microbreweries, the addition of hops was originally intended to preserve ale in the hot colonial outposts of India (unbeknownst to the brewers, it slowed bacterial growth). Boiling water for tea and coffee would have had a similar effect.
Despite the preference for alcohol over water, water was always drunk, sometimes as plain water but often in the cuisine. Soups, stews, and dried foods were commonly prepared in water. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, more water may have been consumed in a household through prepared foods than drunk. So the question remains, how did those searching for drinking water know the source was safe? Long before recognizing the role or even the existence of microorganisms, people have understood that they need to be careful about what they drink. Over time, different groups’ collective experience of identifying safe water has developed into unwritten rules, oral versions of a safe drinking water act. Importantly, however, these practices focused primarily on the source of the water because that was all they could observe.
The ancient Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates, for example, wrote that water from rock springs was “bad since it is hard, heating in its effect, difficult to pass, and causes constipation. The best water comes from high ground and hills covered with earth.” Perhaps the greatest water engineers of all, the Romans, designed their aqueducts to segregate drinking water from other uses. The chroniclers of the time debated over which waters should be most prized. Pliny the Elder favored well water, while Columella preferred spring water. Disparaging the choice of the very wealthy, Macrobius counseled against drinking melted snow because it no longer contained water’s healthy vapors.
Europeans recognized, as well, that certain water sources should be avoided. William Bullein warned in the sixteenth century, for example, that “standing waters and water running neare unto cities and townes, or marish ground, wodes, & fennes be euer ful of corruption, because there is so much filthe in them of carions & rotten dunge, & c .”
Nor are such practices purely historical. A recent study of villages in Yorubaland, a region in southwestern Nigeria, examined how safe water is identified in traditional African communities today. Just as the
Drinking water—any water—was a sign of desperation, an admission of abject poverty, a last resort. Like all Europeans of the seventeenth century, the Pilgrims disliked, distrusted, and despised drinking water. Only truly poor people, who had absolutely no choice, drank water. There is one thing all Europeans agreed on: drinking water was bad—very bad—for your health.
If not water, then what did people drink? The answer in ancient times often was alcohol. The drink of choice in Egypt was beer, and in ancient Greece wine. It may not be surprising that one of the very first buildings constructed in Plymouth Plantation was a brewhouse.
More common, though, was a mixture of water with another substance. Sometimes this was alcohol. The fifth-century Hippocratic treatise “Airs, Waters, Places” recommended adding wine to even the finest water. Beer was routinely added to water (called “small beer”) in the Middle Ages. Water was also commonly mixed with vinegar, ice, honey, parsley seed, and other spices. This both improved the taste and served as a status symbol. The mixtures elevated the status of what otherwise would have been a common drink. After the discovery of the East Indies, mixing hot water with coffee and tea became popular.
It is interesting to note that none of these mixing practices was consciously intended to make the water safer to drink, though this often may have been the result. Alcohol added to water retarded and even killed microbes. While India Pale Ale may now be all the rage in microbreweries, the addition of hops was originally intended to preserve ale in the hot colonial outposts of India (unbeknownst to the brewers, it slowed bacterial growth). Boiling water for tea and coffee would have had a similar effect.
Despite the preference for alcohol over water, water was always drunk, sometimes as plain water but often in the cuisine. Soups, stews, and dried foods were commonly prepared in water. Indeed, in the Middle Ages, more water may have been consumed in a household through prepared foods than drunk. So the question remains, how did those searching for drinking water know the source was safe? Long before recognizing the role or even the existence of microorganisms, people have understood that they need to be careful about what they drink. Over time, different groups’ collective experience of identifying safe water has developed into unwritten rules, oral versions of a safe drinking water act. Importantly, however, these practices focused primarily on the source of the water because that was all they could observe.
The ancient Greek father of medicine, Hippocrates, for example, wrote that water from rock springs was “bad since it is hard, heating in its effect, difficult to pass, and causes constipation. The best water comes from high ground and hills covered with earth.” Perhaps the greatest water engineers of all, the Romans, designed their aqueducts to segregate drinking water from other uses. The chroniclers of the time debated over which waters should be most prized. Pliny the Elder favored well water, while Columella preferred spring water. Disparaging the choice of the very wealthy, Macrobius counseled against drinking melted snow because it no longer contained water’s healthy vapors.
Europeans recognized, as well, that certain water sources should be avoided. William Bullein warned in the sixteenth century, for example, that “standing waters and water running neare unto cities and townes, or marish ground, wodes, & fennes be euer ful of corruption, because there is so much filthe in them of carions & rotten dunge, & c .”
Nor are such practices purely historical. A recent study of villages in Yorubaland, a region in southwestern Nigeria, examined how safe water is identified in traditional African communities today. Just as the
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