V.18.3
SANITARY FACILITIES OF THE PLAN
IN THE LIGHT OF ANCIENT
AND MODERN STANDARDS OF HYGIENE
The sanitary installations of the Plan of St. Gall raise the
interesting question of environmental hygiene in a planned
medieval community of men that can be placed into proper
historical perspective only if analyzed in comparison with
ancient and modern facilities of this type.
THE PUBLIC ROMAN LATRINE
The public Roman latrine consisted of a large space,
usually square (fig. 499) but often trapezoidal or semicircular
(fig. 500A), or a combination of such shapes (fig.
500B). The seats were ranged along the walls all around
the periphery of the building, leaving everyone fully
exposed to the view of the others, with sufficient floor
space in between for people to congregate in amicable
conversation. Channels beneath the seats, flushed by running
water diverted from the aqueducts, drained into the
public sewer system. The seating capacity of these buildings
could attain substantial proportions. The gymnasium of the
city of Philippi had a latrine with fifty seats. In the market
of Miletus there was one with forty (fig. 499A-B); in the
Agora of Athens, one with sixty-four.
[656]
The Romans seemingly
had settled this public need with the same flair with
which they engineered a world-wide system of roads, constructed
their aqueducts, and installed grandiose systems
for metropolitan sewage disposal—engineering feats so
great and new in concept that the Greek philosopher
Strabo (b. 63 B.C.) could remark that "if the Greeks had the
repute of aiming most happily in the founding of cities, in
that they aimed at beauty, strength of position, and the
availability of harbours and productive soil, the Romans
had the best foresight in . . . the construction of roads and
aqueducts, and of sewers that could wash out the filth of the
city into the Tiber."
[657]
Yet as magnificent as all this appears on first sight, in
terms of effective environmental hygiene, it was far from
providing a satisfactory solution to the sewage disposal
needed in the larger Roman cities. Besides the public
latrines, only the houses of the patricians were linked to the
metropolitan water system. The inhabitants of the tenements,
where the remaining two million Romans lived, had
to carry their domestic ordure in pots to a sewage vat under
the stairwell, bring it to nearby cesspits (with which Rome
was riddled), or take recourse to the even more primitive
method of simply dumping their offal from the windows
into the street. Much of Rome wallowed in filth.[658]
RATIO OF TOILET SEATS TO NUMBER OF USERS
On the Plan of St. Gall
If one analyzes on the Plan of St. Gall the ratio between
the number of toilet seats provided for the disposal of
human waste and the number of potential users, one
arrives at the startling conclusion that the standards of
sanitary hygiene in a medieval monastery of the time of
Louis the Pious were far advanced not only over those of
any of their classical proto- or antitypes, but—with the
sole exception of modern de luxe hotels—even conspicuously
superior to common standards of modern sanitation.
The House for Distinguished Guests, as we saw, had
bedding facilities for eight noblemen and eighteen servants.
Since the bedrooms for the noblemen were equipped with
their own privies, the eighteen seats of the outhouse must
have been the reserve of the eighteen servants.[659]
They were
set up at a ratio of 1:1. On the level of the court this appears
to have been the norm. The royal guesthouse of the
monastery of Cluny, a facility which was designed for the
accommodation of seventy guests, was furnished with the
same number of toilet seats.[660]
The Outer School of the
Plan of St. Gall, designed for an occupancy of probably
twenty-four students, has an outhouse equipped with fifteen
seats (fig. 496B),[661]
which yields a ratio of 1:1.6. The
House for Bloodletting, probably never occupied simultaneously
by more than twelve monks,[662]
has seven seats (fig.
496C); it therefore had a probable ratio of 1:1.7. The
Abbot's House with a bedding capacity of eight[663]
has six
toilet seats (fig. 496D), yielding a ratio of 1:1.3. And the
dormitories of the Novitiate and the Infirmary, each of
which appear to have been designed for an occupancy of
twelve persons,[664]
are provided with an outhouse equipped
with six seats, corresponding to a ratio of 1:2.
In modern building codes
To place these figures into proper perspective from the
point of view of environmental sanitation, it may be pointed
out that the latest U.S. Army Field Manual 21-10 on
Military Sanitation prescribes eight toilet seats for every
100 men.[665]
In World War II, it was ten seats for every
200 men.[666]
The Uniform Housing Code of 1961 in section
H 505 recommends for hotels one toilet seat per ten
guests;[667]
and the California Administrative Code, Title 17,
as of 1966 stipulates that in camps, toilets should be provided
at the ratio of one toilet seat per fifteen occupants of
the camp.[668]
The luxury of modern hotels, where each
bedroom is provided with a private bath and a private
toilet, is of relatively recent date. Even today in the majority
of smaller European hotels an entire floor is served by a
single privy at the end of the corridor. The ratio between
available seats and their potential occupants varies anywhere
between 1:10 to 1:30. In the light of these statistics,
the hygiene of the monastery shown on the Plan of St. Gall
must be proclaimed to be superior to that prevailing under
average conditions in most Western countries today. They
fall short only if measured against conditions prevalent in
the most elegant, modern hotels.
The most conservative arrangement on the Plan of St.
Gall is the privy of the regular monks, which is furnished
with nine toilets serving a total of seventy-seven monks,
thus yielding a ratio of 1:8.5. Yet even this is still considerably
more generous than the ratio of 1:12 stipulated today
in the sanitary code of the U.S. Army.
