Smells. Robert Muchembled
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Like any raw material, urine and excrement were grist to the mill of rapidly expanding trade capitalism. They gave rise to surprising new black markets, as enterprising individuals spotted gaps for niche products, as they have always done. A royal decree of 1667 records the criminal activities of numerous market gardeners in La Villette, now in northern Paris, who fed their dogs and pigs on human excrement ‘harvested’ with the help of a corrupt night soil man.22 It is no exaggeration that the raw material was worth its weight in gold to the farmers working the land around Paris, furnishing vital fertilizer for vegetable fields, fruit orchards and vineyards outside the city. Without it, the lucrative market for intensively farmed produce destined for Paris would not have flourished. However, the regulations on such fertilizers were cautious, banning their use unless they had been kept in a dump for three years and reduced to powder. Even so, some specialists complained that the practice only yielded ‘poor seed and vegetables that are harmful to health’. There is no way of knowing whether the taste of such produce worked like Proust’s madeleine on the consumers who produced the organic fertilizer that grew the food. At least it can be said that the persistent ring of fug around the capital was the result of active and ongoing collaboration between Parisians and their more rural cousins.
It was even relatively common practice for farmers to sneak in overnight and steal night soil from the dumps where it was left to dry out, despite warnings from agronomists who were of the firm belief that using fresh excrement as fertilizer gave fruit and vegetables a foul smell. However, the rural population resisted pressure and obstinately refused to use the stinking sludge from various sources stocked in separate dumps, though the source was ten times larger than the city’s holdings of excrement in three permanent dumps that survived until 1779. These were estimated to have taken in 27,000 cubic metres of sewage in 1775 alone. The sewage dumps in Faubourg Saint-Germain and Faubourg Saint-Marceau had been moved some four kilometres out of town back in 1760, the aim being to avoid ‘foul air’ contaminating the foodstuffs transported through the vicinity, including fresh bread baked in Gonesse, north-east of the city. A further aim was to avoid visitors arriving in Paris from being assailed by a terrible stench. The third such dump, in Montfaucon near Buttes-Chaumont (now a park in north-east Paris), was the only one still in service in 1781. It had had a terrible reputation since the days of the late medieval poet François Villon, who wrote of the rows of hanged bodies dangling from the gallows there. Its ten hectares of cesspits full of fermenting sewage and its slaughterhouse piled high with rotting carcases could almost have been something out of Dante’s Inferno.
Even the heart of Paris was an unpleasant experience for the sensitive of nose. Sewage was removed from the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame neighbourhoods by boat, leading to complaints from local residents that they were forced to keep their windows closed and noxious emissions from the boats were tarnishing and bleaching their silverware, gilding and mirrors. The black, nauseating, corrosive sludge was a nightmare for people walking the streets of a city where pavements were few and far between. Over the course of the eighteenth century, work to remove the sludge, overseen by the lieutenant of police, had limited success. First, rag-and-bone men would go through the streets picking up anything of any value, including dead dogs and cats, to sell on. Then came the rubbish carts. To meet the needs of the swelling population, they doubled in capacity in around 1748 to reach 1.5 cubic metres. By 1780, 500 such carts were doing the rounds of the Paris streets every day. At the same time, the city’s seventy sewers, in dire need of maintenance, frequently overflowed, flooding the surrounding streets with sludge whenever there was a storm. Urban sprawl spread out to absorb the dumps that had lain outside the city since the days of Louis XIII, so that an unbearable stench drifted over the surrounding neighbourhoods whenever the wind blew in a westerly or south-westerly direction. The Vaugirard dump stank out Chaillot and Passy. The situation became so untenable by 1758 that the Royal Council ordered new dumps to be created well beyond the faubourgs. The lieutenant of police Henri Bertin (a favourite of Madame de Pompadour) estimated the annual cost of cleaning the city streets at 56,000 livres, given the distances covered: cleaning the sludge may have been one source of his considerable wealth.23
Sewage was big business. When fines and corporal punishment were brought in for anyone caught relieving themselves outdoors, in around 1771, the lieutenant of police Antoine de Sartine had barrels set up on street corners for anyone caught short. Some ten years later, one enterprising Parisian came up with a folding portable privy, charging four sous a go. He soon had competition. The Tuileries terraces were so filthy and stank so badly that Louis XVI’s Director of the King’s Buildings had the yew trees lining the walk cut down. Rather than hiding beneath them to defecate discreetly, visitors could now use the latrines installed there at a cost of two sous. Finding the cost too high, many people simply crossed the river to Palais-Royal. The police had no control over the Palais, which was the property of the Duc d’Orléans. To stem the tide of urine, he had twelve privies built, earning him 12,000 livres in income in 1798, spinning filth into gold like something out of a fairy tale. A three-act tragedy published in 1777 by Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Nougaret and Jean-Henri Marchand, Le Vidangeur sensible [The Sensitive Night Soil Man], foreshadowed Freudian psychoanalysis in drawing a clear link between excrement and money. It starts with an argument between a wastrel son and his tormented father, William Sentfort [Smellstrong], who refuses to let his son and heir’s intemperate excesses dishonour his family and eventually poisons him. Early in the play, one of the son’s friends tries to persuade him of the value of his humble trade: ‘The disgusting mines you together dig shall one day become mines of gold.’ The wastrel son’s reply: ‘It is true he converts foul change into fine silver. I often let him work with his boys while I go and play.’
Pollutant trades
Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), professor of medicine at the Universities of Modena and later Padua, published De Morbis Artificum Diatriba [On the Diseases of Workers] in 1700.24 Reprinted with additional material in 1713, the book proved a major success, being translated into numerous languages; Ramazzini’s role as the founder of modern occupational health is a subject of some debate in specialist circles.
He explained that the idea for the book first came to him while watching night soil men at work in his home, basing his research on direct observation and theoretical inquiry. He noted that all trades were associated with specific ailments, studying over fifty trades and their health issues. Some diseases had physical causes such as heat, cold or damp, for instance in glass workers, bakers and brick makers. Others stemmed from lengthy, violent or irregular efforts or repetitive postures affecting the body. Polluted workspaces could also have a deleterious effect on the health of those working there. The colours and substances used by painters, such as red lead, cinnabar, Venice lead, varnishes, walnut and linseed oil and so on, caused a ‘foul, latrinal smell’ in their studios, eventually killing off their sense of smell altogether – though they may have sought consolation in their superior eyesight. Those making wines and spirits became drunk on the fumes of their produce. Apothecaries also suffered from the harmful effects of the preparations they handled. Ramazzini advised them to drink vinegar for the good of their health when making laudanum. Other doctors made considerable use of vinegar during outbreaks of plague, as it was thought to neutralize the corrupt air causing contagion. Pleasant smells could also have harmful effects: apothecaries