Medieval technology that its potential was fully achieved. Artesian well (1126) A thin rod with a hard iron cutting edge is placed in the bore hole and repeatedly struck with a hammer, underground water pressure forces the water up the hole without pumping. Artesian wells are named after the town of Artois in France, where the first one was drilled by Carthusian monks in 1126. Central heating through underfloor channels (9th century) In the early medieval Alpine upland, a simpler central heating system where heat travelled through underfloor channels from the furnace room replaced the Roman hypocaust at some places. In Reichenau
The Foreign Monks Transformation" and "The Monk's Medicine". Pu likely encountered many monks in real-life and this provided inspiration for such works. Unlike most other stories in "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio", Pu Songling alleges to be recounting a first-hand narration from a monk Ti Kong verbatim in "The Foreign Monks". Sidney Sondergard writes that it is "intriguing to consider the implications of Pu functioning as a kind of ethnographer of this specific culture-sharing group". The Foreign Monks "The Foreign Monks" () is a short story by Pu Songling first published in "Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio" in 1740. It concerns