Sanitary Environment
Smells
Figure [VIII] Medieval street channel
Medieval Paris may have been cramped and unimpressive and even squalid, compared with what was to come, but it had a vitality which found immortal expression in the ballades of Villon.[7] In the medieval period, the sanitary environment is notorious and the air was full of overwhelming bad smell everywhere. Because whatever common herd or aristocrat never have a bath, urinate, defecate, and discarded products in every corner of Paris, and there are no cleaners of the city. People poured out their chamber pots of urine and sewage directly through windows onto the street. If you are lucky enough, you will experience “the holy water” from the sky.[VIII] At that time, gentlemen were walking on the left side of the woman to block the dropping trashes to show their good manners, and then it built as a custom. All of filthy garbages just could wait for rains to be washed away to the Seine River.
Furthermore, the smell was also related to corrupt corpses, at that time, people buried corpses in the soil and allowed them natural corrupted. Charles V moved the royal residence permanently from the Île de la Cité to the Hotel Saint-Pol because of the smell and air. Voltaire said, “ people couldn’t dare to walk in the nasty markets in the narrow alley, stinking the foul smells everywhere... The streets are dark, narrow and scandalous ugly. It seems to represent the most barbarous age.” The interesting thing is that French perfume invention originated from the awful smell, people started to make some new pleasant odor to hide the original niff. These situations are sustainable until 19 century, Napoléon III rised the power and started the renovation of whole Paris urban city planning.
Sewer System
In some cases, rain not only cannot wash the street but also block the streets because of the poor sewer system. There were few paved streets had small channels in the center for wastewater and rain. Sewers are perhaps the most enigmatic of urban infrastructures. The incomplete Medieval sewer system is because people didn’t care about the sewers and there was little use of water in Medieval Europe for personal hygiene, and hence little need for sewers to drain water away from private dwellings. By contrast, in the pre-modern period, the use of water for washing remained predominantly a collective endeavor, and was often therapeutic or remained. [8]Paris's first sewer system was built in the 1200's, it composed of open troughs that ran down the center of the cobblestone road. The first underground sewer was built in 1370 beneath the Rue Montmartre, and drained into a tributary of the Seine River. The Sewers were expanded slowly throughout the next 400 years. However, due to widespread disrepair, the sewers remained a problem for the city, it was not very effective and contributed to the spread of diseases such as the Black Death.[9]
Resources
[7] Comment: RENEWAL OR RENAISSANCE ? (1960). Official Architecture and Planning, 23(5), 199-199. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44128693
[8] Gandy, M. (1999). The Paris Sewers and the Rationalization of Urban Space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 24(1), 23-44. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/623339
[9] Paris Sewers History. (2010, February 23). Retrieved from https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255-s01/mapping-paris/Paris_Sewers_Page.html
[VIII] Medieval street channel https://www.google.de/search q=Paris+middle+age+street&rlz=1C1CHBF_zh-TWUS796US796&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiBzKz_o9DcAhWM6aQKHQQXBwwQsAR6BAgFEAE&biw=1367&bih=791#imgrc=gjGt6ikhah9t5M: