I think it’s going too far to say that the Romans understood disease
What does “understood disease” mean?
If the Romans knew that setting up an army camp one way leads to half the soldiers unable to step away from the latrines and setting up the camp another way leads to most everyone being fine—does that imply understanding disease?
And, by the way, I wonder if a big factor in comparing Roman to medieval European armies would be the prevailing military strategy. In Roman times warfare was mostly mobile—armies marched, then fought. In medieval times a lot more focus was on sieges where an army stays in one place for a long time. Obviously a marching army is less vulnerable to disease than an army that camps in a single place for months.
Sure, but I think it is going too far even to say that the Romans thought that latrines reduced disease. Do you have ancient sources suggesting otherwise?
Yes, the more mobile the Romans are the less the design of their camps matters. And yet, they got it right and the medievals who needed it got it wrong.
There’s a bit of a discussion in the comments here.
That armies suffered from and could be wiped out by disease outbreaks was well-known in ancient times. And if you think that the design of Roman camps’ sanitation was not caused by the desire to avoid sickness, how do you think it arose?
But I agree that empirical advice of the “Don’t do X or bad things will happen” kind could come purely from repeated experience without any idea of why this is so.
I can think of lots of alternate hypotheses for why Romans had good camp hygiene.
(1) Russo’s answer to everything is that they copied all their technology from the Hellenistic Greeks without copying their understanding (eg, aqueducts). History or archaeology probably records who had these camps first. (2) Perhaps urban disease evolved cities to have good hygiene without understanding and the Romans copied the hygiene to the camps fairly arbitrarily. (3) Or maybe it copied some other urban practice that had non-disease reasons. Or pure superstition. This isn’t a detailed hypothesis, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to reject it.
I am sure you can, but before we get to proposing that it was the gurgling in Russel’s teapot that led the Romans to consider the sanitation of their camps, maybe a bit of a consultation with William of Occam is in order?
What does “understood disease” mean?
If the Romans knew that setting up an army camp one way leads to half the soldiers unable to step away from the latrines and setting up the camp another way leads to most everyone being fine—does that imply understanding disease?
And, by the way, I wonder if a big factor in comparing Roman to medieval European armies would be the prevailing military strategy. In Roman times warfare was mostly mobile—armies marched, then fought. In medieval times a lot more focus was on sieges where an army stays in one place for a long time. Obviously a marching army is less vulnerable to disease than an army that camps in a single place for months.
Sure, but I think it is going too far even to say that the Romans thought that latrines reduced disease. Do you have ancient sources suggesting otherwise?
Yes, the more mobile the Romans are the less the design of their camps matters. And yet, they got it right and the medievals who needed it got it wrong.
There’s a bit of a discussion in the comments here.
That armies suffered from and could be wiped out by disease outbreaks was well-known in ancient times. And if you think that the design of Roman camps’ sanitation was not caused by the desire to avoid sickness, how do you think it arose?
But I agree that empirical advice of the “Don’t do X or bad things will happen” kind could come purely from repeated experience without any idea of why this is so.
I can think of lots of alternate hypotheses for why Romans had good camp hygiene.
(1) Russo’s answer to everything is that they copied all their technology from the Hellenistic Greeks without copying their understanding (eg, aqueducts). History or archaeology probably records who had these camps first. (2) Perhaps urban disease evolved cities to have good hygiene without understanding and the Romans copied the hygiene to the camps fairly arbitrarily. (3) Or maybe it copied some other urban practice that had non-disease reasons. Or pure superstition. This isn’t a detailed hypothesis, but I don’t think that’s a good reason to reject it.
I am sure you can, but before we get to proposing that it was the gurgling in Russel’s teapot that led the Romans to consider the sanitation of their camps, maybe a bit of a consultation with William of Occam is in order?