I've stumbled on a 2010 movie which intrigues me.

"A fanatically devout knight and his small band of church-hired mercenaries" went "to a remote, pestilence-free village" to find out why the black death plague didn't affect them at all.

Here goes a well written flick review on NYT: Black Death (2010).

In a biz deal, the two parties involved are the supplier and the procurer. From the supplier's perspective, it wants the deal to be fair, but it may not really care very much whether the deal is truly equitable or not.

I never thought that the modern flush toilet was invented as early as in the 16th century.

There are two interesting tifles about it.

One is that the forerunner of it was called Ajax. Web developers beware, Ajax is something like toilet. :-)

1596: Sir John Harington (born 1561) published A New Discourse of a Stale Subject, Called the Metamorphosis of Ajax, describing a forerunner to the modern flush toilet installed at his house at Kelston.[7] The design had a flush valve to let water out of the tank, and a wash-down design to empty the bowl. He installed one for his godmother Elizabeth I of England at Richmond Palace, although she refused to use it because it made too much noise.[citation needed] The Ajax was not taken up on a wide scale in England, but was adopted in France under the name Angrez. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flush_toilet#History

The other piece is that in the era in which it was invented by Sir John Harington, "life in England during the 16th century continued to be distinguished by a stench no modern nose could easily sustain."

“Even in the goodliest and stateliest palaces of our realm,” John Harington wrote in 1596 about his invention of an early flush toilet, “still this same whoreson saucy stink.” 

http://tv.nytimes.com/2008/03/28/arts/television/28tudo.html

By the way, it seems that on the other hand, the traditional Chinese society and mentality have quenched technological inventions and advancements so much. One example is that it seems no ancient Chinese had been involved in the evolution of the inventions of flush toilets.