More on Night Water
Because I am interested in the origin of words and phrases, I've been trying to discover citations for "night water" and "night soil," terms raised in the Drew Faust item below. Are they really urine and excrement produced at night? Or is there a deeper, darker meaning?
(I know, charming topic for a Monday morning, but this is all about the advancement of knowledge, so hang in there.)
The terms are surprisingly difficult to find via Google.
But night soil is discussed in
this 1897 work on agriculture; it appears to be a blend of excrement and earth. Our author—Frank Humphreys Storer, 1832-1914, former dean of the Bussey Institution at Harvard, papers in the university archives—suggests that fresh waste makes better fertilizer than does night soil.*
Indeed, one strong objection to the use of night-soil...is its great liability to variation. The farmer can seldom be sure as to the real value of any given load of it—not nearly so sure as he would be in the case of horse-manure or cow-dung. As has already been intimated, many farmers enar Boston are willing enough to use night-soil provided they can obtain it in the form of fresh solid excrement....As for night water..well, brace yourself. There's a reference in Samuel Pepys' diary to night water, and it's not what you think. Apparently one of the chief ingredients in 17th century anti-wrinkle creams was dogs' urine, also known as "night water." A 1656 pamphlet advised the reader that "evey morning when you rise you must wash your face in Puppy dog water, and then lay on the painting [makeup]."
Forgive me, because this is too easy.... But is there any particular Harvard professor who might be able to shed some light on these waste-related issues? (And don't you dare say anything about all this being a "waste" of time.....)
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* Incidentally, this work is online because of Google's digitization of Harvard's libraries. Interesting.
