We find Mena, King of Egypt (5000 B.C.), mentioning in his Ordinances that offences in diet were one of the things through which “the genius of death becomes eager to destroy men.”
The Levitical Laws contain many enactments of a sanitary character, they are one of the oldest known sanitary codes, and have many wise and necessary provisions for the health of the people.
Rules for the conduct of rural life were formulated so far back as 100-500 B.C. in Bœotia. Tarquinus Priscus began and Tarquinus Superbus completed the great works for the drainage of Rome in the fourth and fifth centuries B.C., of which the Cloaca Maxima was the most remarkable feature; even to-day the ancient water-supply of Rome and her system of baths are still a source of admiration to the modern world. And 31 to their credit be it said that the Romans carried this knowledge with them to the countries which they conquered; we find aqueducts at Great Chester and Lanchester, an arterial sewer at Lincoln, and the well-known baths at Bath.
From the destruction of Rome until well-nigh ten centuries later was a period in which no advance in sanitation was made; on the contrary, retrogression was the keynote of the time. Warfare, religious segregation, and the spread of asceticism were the chief reasons for this; the ideals of both Christian and Pagan were opposed to personal and public hygiene. “The ascetic violated all laws of personal hygiene, the monastery’s ideal was inconsistent with public hygiene, and both glorified God by teaching submission to pestilence,”[11] which from time to time swept over the country, devastating it from end to end.
But with the increase of trade it became necessary to adopt certain measures for the preservation of human life, and in 1348 we hear of the first street-cleaning and quarantine in those two great centres of commerce, Venice and Cologne. It was in the same year that the most terrible plague which the world has ever known attacked Britain and practically depopulated it, finding its chief prey in the filthy streets of the City. This led in 1379 to an Order in Common Council for keeping the streets clean. But despite this, all through mediæval times personal health was shamefully neglected and 32 public health practically unknown. The consequences are easy to trace; the country was again and again swept by epidemics which were naturally followed by severe famines, and thus on every side progress was checked. The Fire of London at least cleansed London of its filth, and from that time forward matters began to improve. All through the eighteenth century, smallpox, typhus, scurvy, and ague were rampant, and it is not till 1834 that we find the beginning of sanitary legislation. In 1837 the Act for the Registration of Births and Deaths was passed, which at once provided the indispensable foundation for reliable statistics; previous to that date all that there was to depend upon were the Baptismal Registers and the more or less accurate Bills of Mortality. This has been followed by a long series of Public Health enactments concerned with practically every department of life. In fact during the last fifty years the public conscience has been quickened to an extraordinary degree. Much however has yet to be done which cannot be touched by legislation, and it is to the woman, who has been trained in the right conduct of life both private and public, that the world looks for the preservation of healthy human life, much of which is now needlessly sacrificed on the altar of ignorance. In many cases the woman is the only person who can prevent this, therefore she must equip herself for her high and noble duty with all that Science can provide and Art can suggest, neither must 33 she forget that her own home must ever be the starting-point of every endeavour. For the “Mrs. Jellabies” of this world are not those who help forward its progress, rather are they the clogs on its wheels.
Not only charity, but all other virtues begin at home. “So long as the first concern of a nation is for its homes, it matters little what it seeks second or third.”
FOOTNOTES:
Karl Pearson, “The Chances of Death,” p. 3.