Ancient Rome

Exposure to lead has been a health problem for centuries, and may even have contributed to the fall of Rome. Ancient Romans drank wine sweetened with a grape syrup that was made in lead pots, and a single teaspoon of this syrup was enough to cause chronic poisoning. ... 

Many cities of the world do not levy a separate fee on water distributed, and even in those places where water is in shortest supply, a minimal ration may be free to everyone. The problem of wasted water and unmetered water a dding to the overall water demand is not new. In ancient Rome, fountains were coimected to the pubHc water by privately installed and owned lead pipelines, many of which were unrecorded, illegal, and hence untaxed. Frontius, the water commissioner of Emperor Nerva of Rome in AD 96, developed cmde meters to increase revenue and cut demand. 

In Ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder (c. a.d. 23-79) dedicated 37 volumes of Natural History to the emperor Titus. In the last of these books, dealing with gems and precious stones, he describes the properties of the fossil resin, amber. The ability of amber to attract dust was recognised and in fact the word electricity is derived from elektron, the Greek for amber. 

The earliest recorded attempts at organ transplant date back thousands of years.1 More than a few apocryphal descriptions exist from ancient Egypt, China, India, and Rome documenting experimentation with transplantation. For example, an Indian text from the second century bc describes a procedure for nasal reconstruction surgery with the use of autografted skin. Also, Roman Catholic lore has saints Damian and Cosmas replacing the gangrenous leg of a man with the leg of a recently deceased man in the third century ad.1... 

Concretes are cements containing a large proportion of gravel. Hydraulic cements are cements that set (harden) in wet environments, as required when building structures submerged in water. Like all other cements used in ancient times, hydraulic cements were also composite materials in which one particular component, such as pozzolana in ancient Rome (see text below), endowed the cement with the property of setting in wet environments (Gani 1997 Akroyd 1962). 

Turmeric, also known as curcuma, is an easily fading yellow dye that was used in Mesopotamia many centuries b.c.e. and later became popular in ancient Rome. It is derived from the turmeric plant, Curcuma longa, and other varieties of Curcuma indigenous to China and Southwest Asia. The dye is extracted with hot water from the shredded rhizomes of the plant and then dried into a yellow powder. The coloring matter in turmeric is the organic compound curcumin. 

Jedrzejewska, H. (1990), Ancient mortars as criterion in analysis of old architecture, in Mortars, Cements and Grouts Used in the Conservation of Historical Buildings Symp., Rome, pp. 311-329. 

Masschelein-Kleiner, L. (1985), Ancient Binding Media, Varnishes and Adhesives, International Center for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property, Rome. 

After the catastrophic fire that burned ancient Rome in 64 A. D., the emperor Nero rebuilt the city with fire precautions that included wide public avenues, limitations in building heights, provision of fireproof construction and improvements to the city water supplies to aid in fire fighting. Thus it is very evident that... 

A well-known approach to the principle of optimization was first scribbled centuries ago on the walls of an ancient Roman bathhouse in connection with a choice between two aspirants for emperor of Rome. It read— De doubus malis, minus est semper aligendum —of two evils, always choose the lesser. 

ORIGIN OF NAME The name "lead" is the old Anglo-Saxon word for this well-known element, and the symbol for lead (Pb) is derived from the Latin word plumbum, which is also the root word for "plumber," related to the use of lead pipes in ancient Roman plumbing systems. Some of these lead pipes can still be seen in parts of modern-day Rome. 

Although lead is not one of the most common metals on Earth, it is one of the best known. The metallic forms of lead, mercury, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, and zinc were not known as separate elements in ancient times until methods were developed to analyze these ores and their metals. The widespread knowledge of lead is attributed to the ancient Romans, who developed many practical uses for this heavy metal. Lead-lined pipes were used by the ancient Romans to bring water from their famous aqueducts to their homes. In addition, most of the population of Rome cooked their food in pots and pans made of lead and lead alloys. Because... 

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