In the modern world of a cloak - what is it?

It is not possible to establish the age of the first sewer systems on the ground. The oldest cloacas of Ancient Rome - Cloaca Maxima, the first mention of which, either belong to IIV, or to the IV century BC, lead researchers to Etruscan masters, to an even earlier civilization. That is, man is not an animal, and, along with the construction of houses, he immediately began to erect detached sites.

Cloaca as part of the sewage system

With such an antiquity of the first constructions, their Latin names are not surprising. Cloaca - what is this? If you translate the verb "cloacare" into Russian, it turns out - to dirty, to dirty. Hence cloaca is a channel with something dirty, with sewage or the place of their accumulation, or a structure for getting rid of them. There are old European cities where these stone moats are located right along the streets, but, as a rule, sewage outlets were underground, and sometimes represented whole cities. The depths of Paris, described in many novels, are even shrouded in robbery romance. Here justice was administered (albeit very peculiar), the persecuted refuge was found. So cloak - what is it? In modern Rome - a very popular tourist destination.

Cloaca as a metaphor

A special role belongs to this word in literature. From time immemorial cloaca was called all unscrupulous, dirty, unworthy, disgusting as purely in the physical sense (neglected place), and in the spiritual sense - unworthy thoughts and desires. Everything from which in a literal and figurative sense more than smells bad, is printed with this name. And near this you need to put fences.

The term in biology

But this is not only an engineering and literary term. He meets in ornithology - a science that studies birds. Cloacas in birds, as in some fishes and cyclostomes (lower vertebrates), in all reptiles and amphibians (echidna, platypus, etc.) is a certain cavity, which is an enlarged part of the end of the digestive tract. In birds, the urethra and the oviduct exit into it. Therefore, the surface of the eggs of birds coming into the market must be processed. It is difficult to overestimate the value of this organ in birds, as insemination (and, naturally, reproduction) is carried out by the birds due to the process called "the kiss of the cloaca".

Medical interpretation

In medicine, too, this term is present. Cloaca in humans exists at the level of the embryo, then in the process of development it is transformed into two, separated parts - the genitourinary and rectal. Both the first (urogenital) and the second (rectal) parts have independent access to the surface of the human body. They are divided among themselves by a perineum. This, so to speak, physiological given. But in medicine, this term is found even in the name of the disease, which arises as a result of a rare defect of intrauterine development. Applied to this case, the cloaca - what is it? This is a rare and complex anomaly of the development of the zone of the rectum. It is called "congenital cloaca" and is found only in girls. The essence of the disease is that the urethra, vagina and rectum are connected in one common channel, the anus is completely absent. It is detected immediately after the birth of the child. Treatment of the disease occurs only with the help of a very complicated surgical procedure.

The term in the modern world

Recently, the word "cloak" began to occur very often. It happened because from the sphere of narrow specialization it came to the universal space of computer games and modern prose ("Cloaca" by Edgar Doctorow). And if it does not occur in the name of the game, it takes up a considerable part of it. An example can serve as a cloak of Dalaren from the incredibly popular game "World of Warcraft". Cloaca - what's that in WOW? This is a whole city with its heroes and quests. The political arena has also contributed to the promotion of this term.