National Republican., 1883-06-08
uxulene md Sanitary SCIENCE.

hy&tchc 5CLenCes
The tenth annual report of the secretary of
tho Michigan state board of health for the
year ending Sept 30, 1882, contains many
valuable papers on hygiene and sanitary
science These are subjects, at all times, to
all communities, of vital importance The
health of tho people--a robust race of men
and women, equally healthy and vigorous in
mind and body-is the priceless product of
nation, and consequently the acquisition of
knowledge of the physical or scientific laws
by which it is secured should be regarded as
one of the highest attainments and the first
duties even of statesman So say Beacons-
field and Gladstone. So say mon the most
and physics. Such, too, is the judgment of
tho valuable papers Of this report, which,
upon these subjects, extend over q wide field
and include the results of much useful labor.
Sanitation is also a source of wealth. DR..
John Avery, in we'll reasoned paper, full of
bright ideas, urges:
Property is the product OF labor--labor is the
product of muscle and brain force. Muscle and
brain force are the products of physical health
II wo would acquire the first we must protect the
latter We must be sauitarians in order to become
economists.
Few who have examined these subjects will
deny these propositions. Nations or states
and lives from a neglect or ignorance of sani-
tary laws, or the natural and physical laws
which govern man and the earth. During
tho middle ages the AWFUL pestilences the
plague, tho black death, cholera, &C., which
swept over Europe and Asia, Staying hundreds
of thousands, and actually depopulating whole
districts in their course, were tho product of
the ignorance or neglect of those laws in rulers
and people The following from Rankerss
History of France " is picture of the condi-
ton of Western Europe in the fifteenth CEN
tury:
The floors of the houses being commonly of clay
and strewed with rushes or.straw. 1t is loathsome
to think of the filth collected in the novels Of the
common people, and sometimes in the lodgings
even of the superior ranks from spilled milk,
beer grease fragments OF bread, flesh, bones,
spittle, eXcrements of cats dogs, &c. To this
Erasmus, in II letter, ascrlbes the plague, the
sweating sickness, &C., IN London which, in this
respect, resembled Paris and other towns of any
magnitude in those times.
We have also in the work of our sanitary
commission during tho late rebellion an illus,
tration of the beneficial effects of rigid OBJ
servance of sanitary law 1t saved the lives
| g t,I al; to-, L
the sufTerings of thousands of others and en-
abled them to battle both wounds and disease
But for the wise precautions of that commits
sion and the camp police regulations in refer
ence to tents, streets, latrines, and hospitals
scurvy, and diarrhma, and dysentery, and ty
phoid fever would in all probability have
proved more formidable enemies to Gen
Grant before Richmond than all tho forces
under Lee,
AS it was, during the rebellion, during th'
four years from April, 1861, to May, 1865
3Ol,369 Of our brave men were slain in thu
field or died from wounds or disease. Al
awful slaughter But in one year, durinl
1851, in the United States, as shown by thi
report, and that, too, from "preveptables sdis
eases" over quarter of million wer
, slaughtered, or over 50 per cent. Of the who'll
number who were slain and died from wound
, aud disease during four years of murderou
war Truly an appalling record
, Hence grand problem of tho day is, hoy
to prevent this slaughter?
sanitarians answer that this cannot be &C
complished by blindly ascribing these death
t TO the will of an inscrutable Providence;
S that that aged theory is defunct that scienc
y teaches that this prodigious annual slaughte
Q is the work of preventable Diseases that tn
a origin OF the causes of these diseases ar
0 plainly traCeablo to the violation @