… is an especially helpful one to keep in mind this “Earth Day”; it’s from page 13 of Liza Picard’s fascinating 2000 account of life in mid-18th-century London, Dr. Johnson’s London:
We complain of the pollution caused by petrol-driven engines. Imagine the sheer volume of faeces and urine excreted by the engines of eighteenth-century traffic – that is, horses – let alone the dung of the herds and flocks being driven through the streets to markets and abattoirs.
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