A manual of hygiene and sanitation / By Seneca Egbert.

  • Egbert, Seneca, 1863-1939.
Date:
[1907], [©1907]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A manual of hygiene and sanitation / By Seneca Egbert. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    16/500 (page 20)
    an exact balance between food and exercise, and that disease would result from excess in either direction. ^ The excellence of the Mosaic code is acknowledged by all sanitary authorities, and the effects of its observance are seen to this day in the comparative longevity of the Hebrew race. The Greeks cultivated to the extreme both the physical and mental faculties, and had for their motto, A sound mind in a sound body. The Romans, in their aqueducts for conveying water to the city and in the Cloaca Maxima, have left examples of sanitary engineer- ing which are, in certain respects, not yet surpassed. All of which serves to show that the ancients appre- ciated the importance of maintaining and improving health, and the influence of material conditions and environment upon sanitation. The development of hygiene as a science, however, has been within comparatively recent years. Perhaps the first great impulse among English-speaking peoples, espe- cially in matters pertaining to sanitation or State Medi- cine, can be traced to the labors of Dr. William Farr, and to the establishment, through his efforts, of the British Registrar-General's Office in 1838.^ Since then the task of determining the principles and laws of health has been carried on with unflagging zeal by workers both here and abroad, and within the last score of years or ^ Treatise on Airs, Waters, and Places. (About 400 B. C.) ^ Note should be made, however, cf the writings of Johannes Petrus Frank, in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and even earlier, and of Parent DiiChateh^t, between 1820 and 1836. Of the work of the former, it has been said that It was the first orderly presentation of that which had hitherto been known upon these subjects, and was the first systematic effort to rescue from chaos such useful information as miglit be of service in the organization of a department of sanitary supervisors, or, as tbo author preferred to call them, medical police. A. C. Abbot-t, University Medical Magazine, July, 1900.