Peter Hepplewhite - Loos, Poos, and Number Twos: A Disgusting Journey Through the Bowels of History!

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hepplewhite, Peter.

Loos, poos, and number twos: a disgusting journey through the bowels of history! / by Peter Hepplewhite.

p. cm. (Awfully ancient)

Includes index.

ISBN 978-1-4824-3117-9 (pbk.)

ISBN 978-1-4824-3120-9 (6 pack)

ISBN 978-1-4824-3118-6 (library binding)

1. Toilets History Juvenile literature. 2. Feces Juvenile literature. 3. Urine Juvenile literature. I. Hepplewhite, Peter. II. Title.

TH6498.H47 2016

392.3'6d23

Published in 2016 by

Gareth Stevens Publishing

111 East 14th Street, Suite 349 New York, NY 10003

Copyright 2016 Wayland /Gareth Stevens

Senior editor: Julia Adams

Illustrator: Tom Morgan-Jones

Designer: Rocket Design (East Anglia) Ltd.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except by reviewer.

Manufactured in the United States of America

CPSIA compliance information: Batch #CS15GS.

For further information contact Gareth Stevens, New York, New York at 1-800-542-2595.

This book is brimming with poo and pee, so we thought wed get started right in on this page with a steaming bucket of poo. Turn to page 22 to find out more

and dont even ask what this contraption is (although page 27 will tell you if you really want to know!)

A bum sponge

Contents

Oh, the dreaded type 6

The Problem of Poo!

Ancient Loos and Poos (in prehistoric times)

Dried Poos and Worms! (in ancient Egypt)

Hysterical Hygiene! (of ancient Greece)

Public Pooping (in ancient Rome)

Beware the Purple Goddess (of ancient China)

Poo Chutes and Pee Pots (in medieval times)

Explosive Poo and Henry, too! (Tudor toilets)

The Great Stink (of early Victorian times)

Toilet Revolution (finally Victorian loos!)

Toilet Tales

Traveling Loos and Fast Poos

The Future of the Loo and all that Poo

Glossary

More Information

Index

THE PROBLEM OF POO!

Phew, somebody really HAS got a problem with that lot!

Funny how lots of people are shy when they talk about, erm, er, doing their business, er, you know, going to the toilet. So were going to boldly introduce this great topic by looking straight down the pan with some excellent words.

Lets get them out in the open in alphabetical order: defecate, dung, excrement, feces, manure, number twos, pee, plop, poo, urine, wee wee. Go on, shout a couple out loud; you know you want to. Thats better. Now we can be serious.

History isnt just about kings, queens, battles, and dates, history is about everyday things too. And most people have to urinate and defecate every day. The greatest emperors and the humblest peasants had to poop and pee.

Even your teacher has to poop. (Yeah, we know some probably dont, but thats because teachers arent really human.)

How much you poop depends on your sex, age, and what you have eaten, but a good estimate for an adult male is about 1 pound (500 g.) a day. Multiply that by, lets say, 10,000 people for a year. Now you have one of the great problems of human civilization: sanitation. Peoples feces may carry harmful organisms and many diseases are spread by contact with feces. Thats what makes loos and poos such a great topic for historians.

Old Viking Proverb:

Everyone loves the smell of their own farts. Bet you do too.

A GLANCE DOWN THE TOILET

Take a peek at your own poo

You may have noticed that your poos arent all the same. Doctors around the world use the Bristol Stool Chart to classify different poops. Types 3 and 4 are healthy poos.

	Separate hard lumps, like nuts (hard to pass)
	Sausage-shaped, but lumpy
	Like a sausage but with cracks on its surface
	Like a sausage or snake, smooth and soft
	Soft blobs with clear-cut edges (passed easily)
	Fluffy pieces with ragged edges, a mushy stool
	Watery, no solid pieces. Entirely liquid

Ancient Loos
and Poos

Dinosaur Dumps

In 2013, the worlds oldest public toilet was found by palaeontologists in Argentina. It was used as a vast dumping ground by a 7.8-foot-long (2.4-meter-long) herbivore called Dinodontosaurus, 240 million years ago.