The Anatomy of Melancholy

For I would not have anyone as fastidious as that Greek woman Calis, sister of Nicephorus, emperor of Constantinople, and wife of Domenico Selvo, doge of Venice. From incredible self-indulgence, “she refused to use common water”—she would use no ordinary water. But she died “with such an abundance of extremely foul pus,” as my author says: of so disgusting a disease that no water could wash her clean.

Plato would not have a traveller stay in a city that is not governed by laws, or has no swift stream flowing past it; “for the former corrupts the mind, the latter the health”—one corrupts the body, the other the mind.

But this is more than necessary. Excessive fastidiousness is wrong; in an emergency, any water is allowed. Still, pure water is best and, as Pindar maintains, better than gold. It is a special ornament and a great advantage to a city, according to Vegetius, when fresh springs are enclosed within its walls. At Corinth, almost in the middle of the town, there was “a lofty citadel abounding in springs”—a splendid hill full of freshwater springs. If nature does not supply them, human ingenuity must.

It is astonishing to read of those stupendous aqueducts and the enormous sums spent in ancient Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Alexandria and other populous cities to convey good and wholesome water. Read Frontinus, Lipsius on the wonders of Rome, Pliny, book 3, chapter 11, and Strabo's Geography.

The aqueduct of Claudius was especially remarkable: carried on arches for fifteen miles, each arch 109 feet high. They had fourteen other such aqueducts, besides reservoirs and cisterns—seven hundred, I believe. Every house had its own pipes and channels to supply its needs.

Peter Gillius, in his detailed description of Constantinople, speaks of an old cistern that he went down to inspect: 336 feet long and 180 feet wide, built of marble, roofed with vaulting supported by 336 pillars, twelve feet apart and arranged in eleven rows, to hold fresh water.

Enormous sums were formerly spent on channels and cisterns from the Nile to Alexandria, to the wonder of our own age. Their cisterns are so skilfully cemented and constructed that an observer would take them to be made from a single stone: once the foundations have been laid and the cistern made, the house is half built.

The aqueduct at Segovia in Spain is greatly admired nowadays: three tiers of pillars, one above another, conveying fresh water to every house. But almost every city is full of such aqueducts.

Among the rest, everlasting praise is due to the man who brought that new stream to the north side of London at his own expense, and to Mr Otho Nicholson, founder of our waterworks and elegant conduit in Oxford. Such importance has every age attached to having a convenient supply of this element.