Dr. Fixit

Your Home Repair Guide

Thomas and His Crapper

Did you know the manhole covers in Westminster, England, are a big tourist attraction? Imprinted on them is the manufacturer's name: Thomas Crapper and Co. Ltd. It is thought by many that Thomas Crapper, an English sanitary engineer, was the inventor of the flush toilet. However, most learned toilet scholars (!?) attribute the invention to Alexander Cummings some fifty years before Mr. Crapper was born. It is believed that American soldiers during the First World War brought back the slang term "crapper" after seeing his company name on so many English toilets. Though Thomas was not the inventor of the flush toilet he is credited with several patented improvements, the most important being the valve-and-siphon arrangement which is the predecessor to the modern toilet.

We don't even give a second thought to the toilet when it is working normally ... but when it is not it becomes a major nuisance. We're lucky! Just think how it was in days gone by. Picture this: a long cold (hopefully lonely) stone slab with holes in it. To clean up go ahead and use that sponge on a stick over there in the corner (it worked for the last guy!). Yuck!

The late Dr. Lewis Thomas, former chancellor of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute 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...."

So the next time you see a plumber (think of Thomas Crapper) go right up and tell him, "Thanks!" Don't forget to go ahead and also give him a hardy handshake (then run real quick and wash your hands!).