The Fountain of Human Blood

7/27/2019 The Fountain of Human Blood

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THE FOUNTAIN

OF HUMAN

BLOOD

A VITRUVIAN FOUNTAIN OF BLOOD

DAVID N S BENNETT 2013

The Gukurahundi Massacre

Kumbula School, Pumula Village (approx. 5 km SE of Pumula Mission), Matabeleland,

Zimbabwe.

13 February 1983: Whole village beaten, and 7 shot dead, including a teacher, after

digging their own grave.

Witnesses refer to a fountain of blood from the pit.


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(File H, all named, **CCJPZ files confirms 1 name, also 298-9, 310-11)

This great variety in different things is a distribution due to nature, for even the human

body, which consists in part of the earthly, contains many kinds of juices, such as blood,

milk, sweat, urine and tears.

If all this variation of flavours is found in a small portion of the earthly, we should not be

surprised to find in the great earth itself countless varieties of juices, through the veins

of which the water runs, and becomes saturated with them before reaching the outlets

of springs.

In this way, different varieties of springs of peculiar kinds are produced, on account of

diversity of situation, characteristics of country, and dissimilar properties of soils.

Vitruvius - de Architectura 8.3.26

RIGHT ATRIUM

An explanation is required of the virtues and variety of the fountains of human blood,

their extent, and how their qualities may be ascertained.

There are three methods of conducting the human blood to a fountain, in channels

through masonry conduits, or in lead pipes, or in pipes of baked clay.

If in conduits, let the masonry be as solid as possible, and let the bed of the channel

have a gradient of not less than a quarter of an inch for every hundred feet, and let the

masonry structure be arched over, so that the sun may not strike the blood at all.


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When the blood has reached the city where the blood fountain is located, build a

reservoir with a distribution tank in four compartments connected with the reservoir to

receive the blood.

Let the reservoir have four pipes, one for each of the connecting tanks, so that when the

human blood runs over from the tanks at the ends, it may run into the one between

them.

From this central tank, pipes will be laid to the fountains of human blood.

To preserve the flavour of the blood, clay pipes with a skin at least two digits thick

should be made.

These pipes should be tongued at one end so that they can fit into one another.

Their joints must be coated with quicklime mixed with oil, and at the angles of the level

of the venter a piece of red tufa stone must be placed to secure the construction.

This is the mechanism for conducting the human blood to the fountain.

RIGHT VENTRICLE

There are some fountains of warm human blood that supply blood of the best taste,

which is so delicious to drink.

One of these is the Fountain of Muses which feeds off the Marcian aqueduct.

These warm blood fountains are formed in the following manner.

When fire is kindled down beneath in alum or asphalt or sulphur, it makes the pipes

immediately over it hot.

The fire emits a glowing heat to the pipes still further above it, so that the blood in the

pipes begins to boil and to thrust upwards pressurizing the blood in the upper level ofpipes.

The boiling blood then bursts forth from the head of the fountain.

But there are also cold blood fountains of a vile odour and taste.


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The blood rises deep down in the lower level of pipes, passes through pipes that are

heated by fire, and then is cooled by running a long distance through the earth, coming

out above ground in a blood fountain with the taste, odour and colour spoiled.

This occurs for instance at the human blood fountain of Albula and the blood fountain at

Tivoli and the cold blood fountain at Ardea, which all have an odour as though tainted

with sulphur.

Although they are cold, they seem at first to be hot for the reason that when the blood

passes through pipes that are above a fire deep down below, the heated blood and cold

blood meet in the restricted space of the deep inner workings of the fountains pipes.

With a great noise at the collision of the hot and cold blood they take in strong currents

of air through the venting of the pipes, and thus, swollen by a quantity of compressed

air, the cold blood bursts out as if boiling from the fountains.

When the vented pipes are not straight but further confined by ducts and bends, the

force of the air in them drives the blood up through the narrow pipes of the upper level

to the apparent boiling summits of the fountains.

Suppose a bronze vase filled not to the very lips, but containing two thirds of the

quantity of blood which forms its capacity, and with a cover in place.

When the vase is subjected to fire, the blood must become thoroughly heated, and from

the rarity of its nature it greatly expands by absorbing the heat.

So that the blood now not only fills the vase but raises its cover due to the currents of

heated air in it, swelling and running over from the vase.

But if the cover is taken off, the expanding forces are released into the open air, and the

blood settles down again to its proper level.

So it is with the pipes of the fountain of human blood.

As long as the blood is confined in narrow channels, the currents of air rush up in

bubbles to the top of the fountain.

But as soon as they are given the wider outlet of the open fountain, the blood loses the

air on account of the rarity peculiar to human blood, and so settles down and resumes

its proper level.


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LEFT ATRIUM

There is also a type of fountain of blood, which contains an evil substance, and it floats

like a flower on the surface of the blood, of a colour like purple glass.

This may be particularly seen in Athens, where there are aqueducts bearing human

blood to the fountain in the city, and the port of Piraeus, from the blood fountain of which

nobody drinks.

This is due to the presence of the evil flower, but they use the blood of the fountain for

bathing and so forth, thus avoiding its poisonous nature.

At Troezen, the evil flower cannot be avoided, because no other type of blood can be

found, except what the Cibdeli provide, and so in that city all or most people suffer from

diseases.

At the city of Tarsus in Cilicia is a fountain of human blood named Cydnus, in which

people soak their limbs and find relief from pain.

There are also many other kinds of blood which have peculiar properties; for example

the Himera fountain of human blood in Sicily.

Here, after leaving its source, the blood is divided into two separate systems of earthen

pipes.

One flows in the direction of Etruria and has an exceedingly sweet taste because of a

sweet juice in the soil which feeds the humans in the area through which it runs.

The other runs through a country where there are salt pits, and so the blood has a salt

taste.

At Paraetonium, and on the road to Ammon, and at Casius in Egypt there are marshy

lakes which are so salted that they have a crust of salt on the surface.

From these lakes the humans of the area drink, and so the human blood is marred bythe taste of salt.

In many other places there are fountains of human blood which necessarily taste of salt

because the blood runs through areas where there are salt pits.


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Others flow through such oily or greasy pipes that the blood is contaminated with oil

when it is expelled from the fountain.

For example, at Soli, a town in Cilicia, there is a river named Liparis, in which human

swimmers or bathers get anointed by the oil in the water.

Likewise there is a lake in Ethiopia which anoints humans who swim in it, and one in

India which emits a great quantity of oil when the sky is clear.

All the humans who imbibe of these waters subsequently have blood that is likewise

anointed with the oil.

At Carthage there is a human blood fountain that has oil swimming on its surface and

has an odour like sawdust from citrus wood.

From this oily human blood goats are anointed.

In Zacynthus and about Dyrrachium and Apollonia are fountains of blood which

discharge a great quantity of pitch with the blood.

In Babylon, a lake of vast extent, called Lake Asphaltitis, has liquid asphalt swimming

on its surface, with which asphalt and with burnt brick Semiramis built the wall

surrounding Babylon.

Because the humans there drink the waters of this lake the human blood fountain in

Babylon contains liquid asphalt which floats on the surface of the blood.

At Jaffa in Syria and among the Nomads in Arabia, are lakes of enormous size that yield

very large masses of asphalt.

The asphalt is carried in the blood of the inhabitants and fed to the fountain of blood

thereabouts.

The colour of the human blood is darkened by the colour of the asphalt.

There is nothing surprising in this, for quarries of hard asphalt are numerous there.

So when a quantity of blood bursts forth out of the fountain, it carries asphalt with it.

After being expelled from the fountain the asphalt eventually separates from the blood

and falls to the base of the fountain, and coagulates there.


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Again, in Cappadocia and on the road from Mazaca to Tyana there are fountains of

human blood into which if a part of a reed or some other thing is plunged, and

withdrawn the next day, it will be found that the part thus withdrawn has turned into a

red stone, while the part which remained above the human blood retains its original

nature.

In the same way, in the fountain of human blood at the temple at Hierapolis in Phrygia,

there the blood produces an encrustation of red stone at the base and sides of the

fountain at the end of the space of a year.

The encrustations are carved out and placed in the temple where the humans worship.

The encrustation seems due to natural causes, since there is a juice in the blood that

has a coagulating potency like rennet.

When this potency appears in the open after the human blood is ejected by the fountain,

the coagulation cannot but be hardened by the heat of the sun and air, as appears in

salt pits.

There are also fountains of human blood which issue exceedingly bitter human blood,

owing to a bitter juice in the soil that is transmitted to the humans there.

Such is the fountain of Hypanis in Pontus.

For about forty miles from its source the human blood is very sweet; then it is joined by

a pipe that makes the whole concoction bitter.

This is for the reason that the blood of the fountain becomes bitter by flowing through

the kind of soil and the veins in which there are sandarach mines, thus affecting the

quality of blood produced by humans.

This could not be the case, were it not that the juice of the soil, when introduced to the

human system, imparts a flavour to the blood which is peculiar to its situation and kind.

The fountains of human blood are affected by the rivers and divers environments inwhich humans live.

For instance, there are in Boeotia the rivers Cephisus and Melas, in Lucania, the

Crathis, in Troy, the Xanthus.


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In Troy, when sheep are ready for breeding at the proper season of the year, they are

driven every day during that season to the fountain of human blood to drink, and the

result is that, however white they may be, they beget in some places whitish-brown

lambs, in other places grey, and in others black as a raven.

Thus, the peculiar character of the human blood, entering the body of the sheep or

cattle, produces in each case the quality with which it is imbued.

Hence, it is said that the humans of Troy gave the Xanthus its name because reddish

cattle, of a shade like the dark redness of the local human blood, and whitish-brown

sheep, are found in the plains of Troy near that river.

Because of this they named the fountain of human blood at Troy the Fountain of

Xanthus.

LEFT VENTRICLE

Deadly, poisonous types of human blood fountains are also found, the pipes of which

run through soil containing a noxious juice.

This is consumed by the human inhabitants which take in its poisonous quality and thusinfect their blood.

For instance, there is said to be a human blood fountain at Terracina, called the

Fountain of Neptune, which caused the death of those who thoughtlessly drank from it.

As a result, it is said that the ancients stopped it up.

In Thrace there is a fountain of human blood which causes the death not only of those

who drink of it, but also those who bathe in it.

In Thessaly there is a gushing human blood fountain of which sheep never taste, nor

does any sort of creature draw near to it.

Close to this evil fountain there is a tree with crimson flowers.


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In Macedonia, at the place where Euripides is buried, there are two human blood

fountains, one to the right and the other to the left of his tomb.

By one of these, travellers are in the habit of lying down and savouring the blood of the

fountain.

But nobody goes near the fountain on the other side of the tomb, because its blood is

said to deal death.

In Arcadia there is a tract of land called Nonacris, which has extremely cold congealing

blood trickling from a fountain in a pit there.

This human blood fountain is called the Fountain of Styx and no vessel, whether of

silver, bronze, or iron, can hold its blood without dissolving and breaking up.

Nothing but a mules hoof can contain the poisonous human blood from this fountain.

Tradition says that the blood from the fountain was thus conveyed by Antipater through

Iollas into the province where Alexander was staying, and that the king was killed by

him when he drank the poisonous blood.

Among the Alps in the kingdom of Cottius there is a human blood fountain where those

who taste of it immediately fall lifeless.

In the Faliscan country on the Via Campana is a human blood fountain.

Underneath the blood of this fountain the bones of birds and of lizards and other

reptiles, such as snakes, are seen lying.

Some fountains of human blood are acid, and are considered evil, as at Lyncestus and

in the Velian country, at Teano in Campania, and in other places.

The human blood from these when drunk dissolves the organs and forms tumours in the

human body.

There is another fountain, in the Field of Mars, called the Fountain of Mars, where the

blood is acid, and in some cases, when drunk, has the effect of dissolving the viscera of

the body.

The quality of the blood in the Fountain of Mars, seems to arise from an acrid acid

element from which the blood acquires its acridity; and when introduced into the system,


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dissolves that which the blood comes into contact whether generated by decay or

dissolution.

Lead, which is very flexible and heavy, if placed in this human blood fountain and

covered by the acid blood, and there left, will be dissolved,and become white lead.

Such is the vile poisonous human blood of the fountain.

In the same way brass which is more solid by nature, if treated in the same way, and

placed in the acid blood of the fountain, will dissolve, and in time, become verdigrease;

and even rocks of lava, which neither iron nor fire alone can destroy, when immersed in

the human blood of this fountain are dissolved and dissipated by the acrid blood.

Even gold, when covered by the acrid human blood of the Fountain of Mars, will first

tarnish, then coagulate and form a red encrustation, and finally through this alchemy

form itself into a red stone.

From the mortal human blood of this fountain, no cattle will drink, nor even approach.

Near it a poisonous shrub grows, which bears a purple flower.

This evil flower, which if eaten would cause instant death to humans and cattle alike,

feeds on the acrid human blood of the fountain.

Thus the variety and extent of the fountains of human blood has been explained.


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SOURCED FROM VITRUVIUS - THE TEN BOOKS OF ARCHITECTURE - 1914 TRANSLATION

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The Fountain of Human Blood