My "Forgotten English" word today is gardyloo. Citations from two old dictionaries define the word as a warning cry given when the contents of chamber pots were thrown from windows into the street or alley below.

For those of you born in the latter 20th century, a chamber pot is a bucket with a lid kept in the house, perhaps in the bedroom, so that one need not make the trip to the outhouse in the dark. An outhouse, or privy, for those of you in ignorance of pre-indoor plumbing architecture, is a small building built over a pit for the purpose of relieving oneself.

Growing up when and where I did (the 19th century lingered late in Sullivan County, Missouri) I am familiar both with outhouses and chamber pots.

The greatest health-care breakthrough in human history was the development of sanitary sewers and waste-water treatment. Before then, all cities were subject to regular outbreaks of disease carried by sewage. In early America when traveling, cities could be smelled before seen if the wind were right. Sanitary sewers and waste-water treatment, along with clean drinking water treatment and delivery systems, have saved more lives than perhaps any other single idea.

Water and sewer services must be community based. It makes no sense to speak of "rugged individualism" when considering clean water and sewage treatment for New York City. America is a nation built upon communities just as much or more than on "rugged individualism", contra Rush. Traditional Mainstreet Midwest Conservatism has always known this.

The History of Sanitary Sewers

How Sewer Systems Work

A History of Drinking Water Treatment