Grows firm in oak, and fugitive in wine.”
It is a necessary beverage for man and other animals,—is perpetually used as a solvent for a great variety of solid bodies,—acts an important part in conveying nourishment to the vegetable world, and gives salubrity to the atmospherical regions,—in fine, it is a fluid so generally distributed over our globe, and consequently so universally known, that to enter into the minutiæ of its various properties would be superfluous for the purposes of these pages.
“If there be any universal medicine in nature,
It is water”—says Hoffman.
Considering water dietetically as well as medicinally, it cannot but be a matter of wonder, to all who know anything of the water drunk in this great metropolis, that no measures have ever been taken for the purification of an element so essential to a healthy existence, although many excellent plans have from time to time been suggested by persons practically conversant with such matters. In the Report of a committee of the House of Commons, published so far back as 1836, it is stated of the water from the Thames, that it “receives the excrementitious matter from nearly a million and a half of human beings;—the washings of their foul linen,—the filth and refuse of many hundred manufactories,—the offal and decomposing vegetable substances from the markets,—the foul and gory liquid from slaughter-houses,—and the purulent abominations from hospitals and dissecting-rooms, too disgusting to detail.” The polluted state of the water supplied to this vast metropolis is not, however, the only crying evil. The deficiency in quantity as well as the deleterious quality is also a matter of just complaint, the supply of this first necessary of life being insufficient for drinking and culinary purposes, independent of its uses as an hygienic agent, for personal ablution; the salutary effects of which we will next consider—
“And in the bath prepared my limbs I lave.
Reviving sweets repair the mind’s decay,
And take the painful sense of toil away.”
The use of the bath has doubtlessly existed from the beginning of the world. Bathing appears to have been a practice instinctively adopted by all nations and tribes throughout the universe. Amongst the North and South American Indians—in Africa—even among the most barbarous and uncivilized races—bathing is a usage to which they pay scrupulous attention: yet, strange to say, to this day, personal ablution is little known or practised in this otherwise proudly pre-eminent country, as a hygienic agent: it is viewed more as a matter of luxury, and then but very sparingly had recourse to, even by our wealthy and middle classes.
Socrates tells us that “bathing renders a man pure, both in soul and body.” Clemens Alexandrinus says, it should be practised “for the sake of HEALTH and cleanliness, and, lastly, of pleasure.”