So (he said, about to go check on this himself), how did Cities like London, Paris and Rome actually get fresh water in the old days? Your stereotypical small town had a well, or a stream nearby. But larger mideval cities had what? Tons of wells? Ancient Pipes?
I’m not familiar with specifics on how London and Paris got fresh water other than from cisterns (rain water recepticles) and the Thames and Seine respectively. I do know what we now consider unpotable, was pretty much run of the mill water for most folks in the Middle Ages and earlier.
As for Rome, they had an extensive system of aquaducts that would bring fresh mountain spring water and snow melt into the city from several miles away. Their system was so impressive as to create indoor “plumbing” for a number of buildings–most obviously the baths, and contained enough force (from gravity) to operate fountains. In fact, the Romans were well aware of the power of water running downhill in a straight line. The end result of several straight miles of aquaducts in Rome? Turn on the faucet for the bidet and get blown through the roof! Okay, I’m not entirely certain that they had faucets, per se, but they did purposefully construct bends in the aquaducts to slow the speed of the water.
Sadly, the Romans, for all their civilizing achievements, were not able to discover the cause of what we now refer to as lead poisoning. Most of the pipes in the Roman aquaducts were made of, or lined with lead. As a result much lead leached into the municipal water supply.
In London at least, it was lots of wells.
One of the pioneers in the study of epidemiology (his name escapes me right now) did a study of locations of victims of a recent cholera outbreak in London. He put little markers all over his map and found that, with one exception, all of the victims lived within a few hundred yards of a particular well. The one exception was a girl who went to school in the area but lived elsewhere. When they closed off the well, the cholera outbreak stopped.
So it was wells in London.
The London epidemiologist was John Snow. As stated he did trace the Cholera outbreak to a single well from which he removed the pump handle.
Anyway see the fairly exhaustive site listed above.