A paper presented by Dr. Bindeswar Pathak, Ph.D., D.Litt., Founder, Sulabh Movement at International Symposium on Public Toilets held in Hong Kong on May 25-27, 1995
Famed physician-writer, the late Dr. Lewis Thomas, former Chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, wrote in 1984: "There is no question that our health has improved spectacularly in the past century...One thing seems certain: It did not happen because of medicine, or medical science or even the presence of doctors.
"Much of the credit should go to the plumbers and engineers of the Western world. The contamination of drinking water by human feces was at one time the single greatest cause of human disease and death for us; it remains so, along with starvation and malaria, for the Third World. Continued
Considered an unacceptable discussion topic, socially and academically, the toilet habits of our early predecessors has not been extensively documented, those academics who did dare to write on the subject were considered vulgar, lowly and in some cases erotic.
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