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by mellinoe 924 days ago
> The brewing process helps a bit but you you can just boil water after all.

Was this widely known?

3 comments

No, not before Louis Pasteur. It's likely that people knew brewed beverages were safer but didn't know why, and didn't know they could skip most of the brewing process and simply boil the water.
They didn't knew about bacteria and wouldn't have had the theory to explain why it would help.

Boiling water wasn't really that necessary because the medieval period was sparsely populated and people had access to safe water sources. I am sure they would have figured out boiling water if their survival dependent on it.

We know that People generally knew about basic hygiene and applied it even if they lacked modern theory.

> They didn't knew about bacteria and wouldn't have had the theory to explain why it would help.

That didn't stop say, the sterilization effects of silver from being widely known and spread across myths.

Fewer people got sick when they drank from silver cups and silver stuff. They didn't know a thing about bacteria, but enough people drinking from enough different cups and suddenly a pattern emerges that forms the basis of a myth or legend.

> We know that People generally knew about basic hygiene and applied it even if they lacked modern theory.

Soap and its effects to destroy common pathogens (viruses and bacteria) wasn't known... but "Hygiene" became a thing as early as 400BC Roman periods because of similar patterns.

The theories we have today summarize centuries or millennia of collective experience. Not the other way around. We don't need to understand bacteria to discover how useful soap, boiling, or silver/anti-bacterial surfaces are. Instead, we use our knowledge of "silver prevents sickness", "soap prevents sickness", and "boiling prevents sickness" to help us discover a grand theory of microorganisms / bacteria.

Hippocrates did suggest this approach of purifying water so at least educated doctors would've have certainly known that. Also it's not exactly rocket science most people would have probably understood that to some extent. At least that boiling removes "bad" smells and improves the taste (that's what Hippocrates said at least, not how effective that is).