[Sca-cooks] OT Harington's Flush Toilet

[Terry Decker]

One of those oddities of history just scarpered across my path.  While
checking out the Regimen Sanitatis Salernitanum as translated by Sir John
Harrington in 1608, I came across the fact that he had written in 1596, A
New Discourse of Stale Subject Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax.  The title
is a pun, but the text is a description of a flush toilet.

You can catch the mechanical drawing here,

http://web.uvic.ca/shakespeare/Library/SLTnoframes/ideas/watercloset.html

At least one source suggests that Harington may have had one manufactured
for Queen Elizabeth, his godmother.

Bear