Even King George II had an Official 'Bugg Destroyer' to Shoo Bugs from his Palaces' Furniture and Curtains

Here's a letter to the Los Angeles Times, followed by a reprise of a post from 2004:

John Crowther is correct that Benjamin Franklin's world "was vastly different from today's world" (Letters, August 1).  But that world was different in the opposite way that Mr. Crowther imagines.

Contrary to Mr. Crowther's suggestion, the 18th century was not less polluted than the 21st; it was vastly more polluted.  Human excrement and other environmental hazards were a part of everyday life in the 18th...