Lecture on sanitary reform / by Alexander Thomson.

  • Alexander Thomson
Date:
1860
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lecture on sanitary reform / by Alexander Thomson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ]Regarding air, water, and light as our three great sanitary agents, we may fairly sum up the rightful employment of them all in one homely word—viz., Cleanliness. Without a plenti¬ ful supply of all three this cannot exist, either in our houses or in our streets. Cleanliness.—There is an old proverb which tells us that u Cleanliness is next to Godliness and, truly, its importance can scarcely be over-estimated, either in its moral or its sani¬ tary results. As a sanitary matter, it must be regarded in two aspects— the one private, the other public—the one having to do with the care of the person and the interior of the house, the other being occupied with the necessary regulation of the public drains, and sewers, and streets, and courts of towns, and the immediate vicinity of houses and farm buildings in the country. The former are the personal concern of each individual; the latter, at least in towns, are more or less under the control of Acts of Parliament and public Boards. Personal cleanliness, in all ranks of society, is admired and praised, but few persons, comparatively, are aware of its im¬ portance to health. Every portion of the skin of the human body is full of openings visible only to the microscope. Through these open¬ ings, or pores, as they are called, a perpetual process of purifi¬ cation of the whole frame ought to be going on; but, if the pores be clogged, or obstructed by a coating of filth, the process is checked, and the system more or less deranged. It will give you some idea of the importance of this when I state that, in a square inch of the palm of the hand, there are 3,500 of these pores, and, on an average, about 2,800 over every inch of the body—being about 7,000,000 in number on the whole body of a person of average size. These, in fact, are so many self-acting chimnies, constantly, but imperceptibly, at work, carrying cff what must be removed from the human frame, and the quantity thrown off by the skin of a full-grown man, by means of this insensible perspiration,
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