COLOCM. 



and freshen it, for masses of dirt and rubbish of all 

 BOrtS \\as allowed t accumulate there. In the market 

 places drains were placed' to carry liquid rel'ux- from 

 watering-places for horses and cattle, but these were 

 often obstructed. Nor did only street dirt and house- 

 hold refuse accumulate in the thoroughfares: the bodies 

 of dead animals were thrown into the streets and 

 allowed to remain there indefinitely. 



The conditions were favorable for the propagation of 

 rats, flies, mosquitoes and other carriers of disease germs. 

 There needed only the specific germs to pre- insanitary 

 cipitatc epidemics. It is not strange, there- 

 fore, that until the middle of the seventeenth 

 century, when the independence of the city was lost 

 and Cologne was subjected to a thorough house-cleaning 

 by the French, that disease, and especially plague, 

 often raged in Cologne. In the year 1503 no less than 

 20,000 people died of plague here. In 1540 there were 

 200 deaths a day, and in the two years of 1665 and 

 1666, the deaths numbered 11,403. 



The city council had, in the fifteenth century, made 

 a futile effort to establish a regular system of removing 

 filth from the streets. An agreement was made with 

 two peasants whereby each should maintain a good 

 horse and cart and, moving from street to street, carry, 

 without payment from the individual citizens, all ordi- 

 nary dirt and rubbish from the streets to the river. 

 The result was unsuccessful, as might to-day be expected, 

 considering the inadequacy of the force. The city 

 decided to abandon this plan of cleaning the streets 

 and passed numerous ordinances aimed to punish 

 citizens who threw their dirt before the doors or neg- 

 lected to remove refuse from their property. But the 



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