[Sca-cooks] Metal Poisoning from the fork - i.e. acqueduct

[JIMCHEVAL at aol.com]

According to the sources Johnnae cited, probably the use of lead lined  
vessels in making reduced wine (defrutum) etc. Lead pipes certainly  brought 
water from the aqueducts to houses (and surviving pipes often tell us a  great 
deal about the neighborhood)

http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-water-highways-of-gaul.html

But  the consensus seems to be the lead wouldn't have had a strong enough 
effect to  cause much damage.

This said, I don't know that anyone has clearly  demonstrated that lead had 
anything to do at all with the decline of the Empire,  not least because so 
much of it was elsewhere. At least one Roman emperor, for  instance, came 
from Gaul. My own guess would be that over-extending one's rule  to the point 
that one was dependent on former enemies (an awful lot of "Roman"  soldiers 
were German, including Clovis' father) would have been more fatal. But  I'm 
sure there are whole fields of study which debate the question. 
 
Jim  Chevallier
_www.chezjim.com_ (http://www.chezjim.com/) 

Beyond Apicius (2):  recipes from other Roman sources
_http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/05/beyond-apicius-2-recipes-from-other.ht
ml_ 
(http://leslefts.blogspot.com/2014/04/beyond-wine-water-and-beer-what-else.html) 







In a message dated 5/12/2014 4:30:16 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
lordhunt at gmail.com writes:

Again we  are back to square one? What lead poisoned the  Romans?