The intestinal labours of Paris

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the treatment of waste and sewage in eighteenth-century Paris and on the numerous small manufactures that flourished around the cesspits of the French capital and produced saltpeter for the conservation of dried meat, gut for musical instruments or for Spain’s chorizo factories, lime from the hides coming from the butcher’s shops… It also focuses on life underground, in the cellars, and on the extreme urban mortality due to the pervasive insalubrity generated by the digestive process at work in the city.