eli5: When people used wells for drinking water, how did they not get sick? Was there some type of filter or was the water just naturally clean?
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>eli5: When people used wells for drinking water, how did they not get sick? Was there some type of filter or was the water just naturally clean?
Before the advent of industrialized agriculture, the heavy focus on en-masse animal husbandry, and industrialization in general, which tends to ***heavily*** pollute the environment around and downstream of the farms due to chemical runoff and feces contamination, many water-sources were, comparatively-speaking, safe to drink, especially in comparison to today.
You can read reports from Colonial (1600s-1700s) New England in the US of people drinking straight from rivers that are, in the modern day, ***hopelessly-polluted*** from upstream factories and agricultural runoff
In addition, rock, sand and soil acts as a *relatively*-decent filter for water: drinking water from a well might be safer than drinking the “same” water from the river next to the well.
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