2

The Bucket Era

第二章

桶的时代

The Western world was very different after the fall of the Roman Empire. Without Rome’s engineers, planners, and armies, cities faded into the background. Between 500 and 1400 CE, few places in Europ had populations that were greater than a fifth of thesize of Rome at its peak. To our modern eyes, most medieval cities would seem like rural towns surrounded by a protective wall.¹ Houses were clustered intight rows to protect city dwellers from the winter cold. The attached houses created the familiar narrow streets and town squares of old Europe, but hidden behind their facades were spacious backyards, where city dwellers grew food and tended livestock. Orchards, pastures, and a scattering of open countryside started just outside of the walls, with plenty of open space for farming, which was the main occupation of most of the city’s residents.

罗马帝国衰落之后，西方世界与之前大相径庭。没有了古罗马的工程师、设计师及军队，城市逐渐失去了昔日的亮丽色彩。公元５００至１４００年间，欧洲很少有地方其人口规模超过罗马鼎盛期人口的五分之一。用现代的眼光看，大多数中世纪的城市不过是由城墙包围着的偏僻小镇^［１］。住房以密集的联排式簇拥在一起，有助于居民度过寒冷的冬天。这些排屋营造出古老欧洲典型的狭长街道和城市广场，隐藏在这些房屋后面的则是宽敞的庭院，那是市民耕种农作物和饲养牲畜的场所。果园、牧场和零散分布的开阔田野是中世纪城市的常见景观。城墙之外就是偏僻的农村，那里有广袤的土地用于耕作，而耕种是当时大多数市民的主要职业。

In the early years, local sources provided enough water for the peopleof medieval cities. More often than not, a bucket was all that was needed. Because waterways were important as a means of transportation, many cities were located on rivers, which meant that residents could simply walk to the water’s edge to fill their buckets. If the nearest river was too far away, they would take their buckets to communal wells in the public square.

在中世纪早期，当地水源为城市居民提供了足够的水。只需要有个水桶一般就能满足日常用水的需求。因为水路在当时是一种非常重要的运输方式，很多城市就位于河滨，这意味着居民只需步行到河边就能用水桶装满水。如果离河流太远，他们就会拿着水桶到广场的公用水井取水。

(Last two paragraphs of Chapter 2)

Although the collection of human wastes resulted in cleaner drinking water, it did not eliminate risks for pathogenic microbes. The Asian system ofcollection and distribution of night soil included a step in which wastes were aged. Yet although storing wastes for up to a year before putting them onfields may have reduced the smells and lowered the infectivity of the pathogens, it did not eliminate the risk of disease. Gastrointestinal illness was endemic among farmers and their families. Conditions were not as bad forcity dwellers who bought the produce, because before it was eaten it was cookedor pickled—practices that substantially reduced the risk of infection.

尽管人类粪便的收集使得饮用水变得比较洁净，但这并没有消除水中存在致病微生物的风险。亚洲地区收集和输送粪便的系统里有一个将粪便陈化风干的步骤。尽管粪便在撒到土地之前可能已经储存了长达一年的时间，减少了臭味并降低了感染致病菌的概率，但这并没有完全消除感染疾病的风险。胃肠病是农民及其家庭成员常见的疾病。而对于购买农产品的城市居民来说，情况则没有那么糟，因为他们吃的农产品都经过烹饪或者腌制，这些做法极大地减少了感染病菌的风险。

As the urban populations in Europe continued to grow during the nineteenth century, some European cities struggled to develop approaches likethose being used in Asia for moving wastes to the countryside. Modern manufacturing processes led to the use of metal containers that fit onto the bottom of a toilet seat, rather than simple buckets, which simplified the collection of night soil and reduced the smell, and to the development of mechanical pumps that made it easier to remove wastes from cesspools. By the late nineteenth century, this system was also losing its economic appeal as other sources of fertilizer were discovered and popularized. Nevertheless, the protracted early struggle to remove wastes from city streets and to find water that had not yet been contaminated had set the course for the development ofthe maze of water and sewer pipes underneath our modern cities.

１９世纪的欧洲，随着城市人口继续扩增，一些城市不得不努力开发将粪便运到农村的途径；这套方法与亚洲城市使用的方法大致相似。现代制造工序促成了金属便桶的使用，不再需要用简单的木桶；这不仅简化了粪便的收集，还可以减少粪便的臭味。现代制造工序还促成了机械泵的发展，这使得从化粪池移除粪便更容易。到１９世纪后期，由于其他来源的肥料的发现和推广，这种原始粪便收集系统随之失去其经济价值。然而，早期将人类粪便从街道清除以及寻找未受污染水源的实践，为我们现代城市路面底下错综复杂的给排水系统的发展确定了方向。

ps. I typed up the English myself, so errors are possible.

水４．０：饮用水的过去、现在与未来

［美］戴维·塞德拉克　著

徐向荣　等译    虞左俊　校

上海科学技术出版社

出版时间：2015.08

ISBN：978-7-5478-2729-1

定价：38元

Water 4.0: The Past, Present, and Future of the World's Most Vital Resource

Paperback：March 31, 2015

by David Sedlak (Author)