§ 34.
It has been fully proved in the course of our previous investigations that Asia and Egypt must be regarded as the two focus-points of exaggerated sensual licence, the conditions of climate being most favourable in those regions for the generation of affections consequent upon sexual excesses. So it may be fairly concluded without further proof that in the same parts of the world attention was early devoted to the problem how to render such influences,—no mere passing ones, be it observed, but continuously operative,—as little harmful as possible. Now in what way could this end be more adequately attained than by cleanliness carried out to the highest possible degree? As a matter of history, the merest superficial acquaintance with the customs and usages of Antiquity clearly shows that equally in Asia and in Egypt concern for bodily cleanliness had occupied the particular attention of both political and sacerdotal Legislators from the most remote period. More than this, it had come to be looked upon by the people as so entirely necessary, as to be all but inextricably blended with their very life and being. Any idea of vexatious compulsion entirely disappeared, and the laws and ordinances directed to this object are in force to this day as fully as they were thousands of years ago.
Inhabitants of the temperate zone who visited these lands were bound to think,—unless they gave more careful consideration to the subject than most were likely to do,—such almost universal and such scrupulous care for cleanliness exaggerated; and so we find, e.g. the Greek writers, who cite many of the usages of this description, invariably referring to them merely as a sort of curiosity. In later times, e.g. in St. Athanasius,[208] they are even condemned as being prompted by the Devil, in order to diminish the amount of time to be devoted to pious exercises. It may well be that in course of time a too scrupulously precise dependence on ancestral custom had brought many of these usages into ridicule, especially when they were practised in countries where in some cases the reasons for their observance altogether cease to be operative. Yet anyone who considers with due care the conditions under which they were originally introduced, will find himself constrained to admit that the Lawgiver was only obeying a behest of necessity.
If the different customs and usages of the Ancients in connection with their careful attention to cleanliness are examined more minutely, they are found to be divisible into two classes, according as (1.) their object was to prevent uncleanliness, or (2.) to banish it, when once admitted. All measures connected with sanitary police supervision, the enforcement of which in modern civilized States leads to such endless difficulties, were almost entirely in the hands of the Priests, to whom the People were accustomed to accord an unquestioning obedience. It was an easy matter therefore to prevent any injurious contamination from extending over a wide area; it sufficed simply to declare unclean whatever might prove injurious to health to ensure its being avoided in practice,—and in the majority of instances with the most scrupulous care. This is a factor in the problem that appears never to have been properly appreciated by our Historical Pathologists; otherwise they must long ago have abandoned many prejudices regarding the knowledge possessed by the Ancients as to contagious matter. For how could practical observations be collected on infection and the liability to infection, when every possible chance of infection was carefully and generally avoided? Most of the Peoples of Antiquity considered contact with a dead body a pollution, more than this, they thought even the neighbourhood of a corpse to have the same effect. They hung up notices to warn the passers-by, and placed vessels of water (ἀδάνιον, ὄστρακον, γάστρα—water-stoup, earthen vessel, water-pot) before the house where a dead man lay, that those who came in and out might be able to purify themselves again on the spot[209]. Of course all did not go so far as the Persians, who declared every sick person unclean. Still it is a fact, and this most certainly not merely among the Jews, that all the various infectious skin-diseases that were massed together under the name of Leprosy[210], and also Gonorrhœa (Clap), made the sufferer, and also everything he touched, unclean, and caused them to be set apart where no one should come in contact with them; and this continued so long as the sickness lasted.
Now does it really need any further proof that these diseases developed a perfectly well-known form of contagious matter: or is an arbitrary and imaginary theory to be adopted by preference, to the effect that injunctions of the sort owed their existence merely to the caprice of the Legislator, and were not based on any actual experience of real detriment resulting from their neglect in favour of others? At any rate it is certain that, where these laws were in force and where each individual followed them out exactly, a disease that is communicable only by close contact could not possibly be disseminated over any wide area. This could not take place under such circumstances, even though it had been engendered in its original form and continued prevalent for a long period of time.
However it was not only the sick that were avoided, but all possible causes as well that might lead to the disease. It was not only the effort required and the pain, but most likely the possibility also of injury resulting, that made the weakly Asiatic forgo the Jus primae noctis (Right of the first night), and declare unclean the supposed[211] injurious effects of the vaginal blood that flowed on the rupture of the hymen, as well as the act of defloration itself. Pollution was guarded against in this case, as it was by the regulation banishing women during the time of menstruation from the neighbourhood of men, a regulation that had the binding force of law amongst almost all the Nations of Antiquity. The same held good for the time of purification of women who had been lying-in,[212] a condition which was supposed in some unexplained way to be able to exert a possibly injurious influence on the genital organs of the husband.
[Depilation.]
§ 35.
In spite of all this it might yet happen that contact with a sick person could not be avoided, and all possible causes of the diseases in question escaped. Attention therefore was naturally directed to the effort to make the admission of the contagion and of matters having deleterious effects as difficult as might be. There were two means for attaining this end held to be especially effective,—depilation and circumcision.
The hair as is well known is particularly apt to attract and retain all kinds of moisture; and it will of course do this in the case of the genital secretions, whether healthy or morbid, if they come in contact with it. These secretions will the more readily exert an injurious effect, as each hair is accompanied by at least two cutaneous glands, possessing an excretory duct or pore, and in those parts of the body where a thicker and stronger growth of hair is found, develop a considerably increased degree of activity,—an increased activity which they exhibit in any case in hot countries. “Hence too the Priests in Egypt shave the body carefully; for there is something collects under the hair, that must be removed,” Philo says in a passage cited above, and a fragment of Theopompus preserved by Athenaeus[213] also tells us, that this habit existed also among the Greeks, as well as among different peoples of Italy.
In later times however the habit gradually disappeared in these countries; and is only found again at the period of greatest luxury, when the Pathics endeavoured by the removal of hair from all parts of the body, except the head, to assimilate their outward appearance to the feminine type[214]. Especially were they bound to rid the posteriors[215] of hair, as one penetrating into the anus during unnatural connexion might easily cause small cuts at the orifice, and produce chafings of the penis. For the same reason paederasts, as indeed was the case with all amateurs of Love, invariably took care to remove all hair from the genitals[216], to avoid endangering the posterior and the private parts of their mistresses. Even more than men, did women seek to remove the hair from their private parts, as they do to this day in the East. This appears never to have been the case among the Jews; but in Asia and in Egypt the custom was observed by all classes of the people, and probably from those lands first spread into Greece and Italy. It seems to have been adopted very generally by Greek women;[217] but it was especially hetaerae and “filles de joie”[218] who practised local as well as general depilation. A similar state of things must have existed at Rome[219], where older women resorted to the removal of hair from the genitals as a means of concealing their age[220]. In any case whether in Greece or in Italy the purpose and special object of depilation seems to have been soon lost sight of, and the practice to have been still to some extent kept up merely as a matter of fashion. Nevertheless it is a fact that the habit has continued even down to modern times in these countries, and is actually followed there to some extent on the ground of cleanliness[221].