CHAPTER IX Games T'was in the prime of summer time, To a level mead they came, and there ASSURED of the marvellous progress which has been made in the science of the physician, the skill of the surgeon, and in the assiduous and intelligent supervision of the trained nurse, confidently anticipating new discoveries for the alleviation of pain and the cure of disease, and placing no restriction on tentative experiments, except that they be made in corpore alieno (even as Artemus Ward, when prevented by other engagements from taking part in the war, freely offered the service of all his relations), I would now propose to consider other helps to longevity, improvements in the preservation as well as in the restoration of health, which have become during my lifetime more and more appreciated, accessible, and practically applied. We have been gradually convinced that prevention is better than cure, and the laws of sanitation have not only been proclaimed from the housetop, but they have been enforced in the cesspool and in the sewer. The councils of the nation, of the counties and the towns, are unanimous on the subject of stinks, and in their aspirations for sweetness and light; and their appointment of sanitary inspectors for the admonition of those who seem rather to relish than to repudiate bad smells has been most beneficial. There is even hope, although at present it is little more than a glowworm in a wood, a good deed in a naughty world, that the time may come when the abomination of desolation itself, monstrum, horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum, the noxious fumes and vapours of smoke, which pollute our atmosphere and darken our light, may hurt the earth no more; when no men shall imperil or impair the health of their fellows to satisfy their greed of gain; when the children. of those now dwarfed and pale shall regain the stature and the glow of health; when the fish shall swim in the pure stream, and the white sheep shall graze on the green pastures, and the thrush shall sing amid the blossoms of the orchard, and the garden shall be gay with flowers. We want a St. George to slay this dragon. The working men are acclimatised, and must earn their bread. The tradesmen cannot afford to prosecute their wealthy customers. The proprietors of smoky chimneys are not alarmed by literary protests, however just and cleverly written, nor are they distressed or deterred by the infliction of small fines. They decline to believe, although it has been proved again and again (several years ago Mr. Fletcher, of Bolton, assured me that the process by which he had made eleven factories smokeless had resulted in gain rather than loss), that the smoke nuisance could be abolished without a tedious and costly outlay. If the working men were unanimous in asserting their rights and in the exercise of their powers, no representatives would go to Parliament who were not pledged to secure for their constituents the gracious gifts which were surely intended for us all-pure air, and light, and water. These soften into mercy the penal curse, “In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread." At present we are in a state of transition, and it is every man's duty and interest to ring out the old and ring in the new. We resemble so many of the French, German, and Italian cities, partly ancient and partly modern. At Colne, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fanged with murderous stones, I counted two and seventy stenches, All well-defined and separate stinks. Ye nymphs, who reign o'er sewers and sinks, But tell me, nymphs, what power Divine And in many others the open sewers run down the streets and the narrow lanes, and the effluvium is as vigorous as that which caused John Leech to exclaim at a place which we visited together, "I think this stench is strong enough to sketch." The modern additions are spacious, breezy, and sweet, as in our own large cities we have the open squares and broad streets in close contiguity with the courts and alleys, but with us there is at this present time a far more general desire and endeavour to improve and purify the dwellings of the poor than in those countries to which I have referred. It is gratifying to notice the diminution of those frowsy persons who prefer to travel in almost all weathers with the windows of their carriage closed and conscience makes such cowards of those who remain that they only protest against the admission of air by a sour expression of countenance and a rearrangement of wraps. Generally we have become more sensible of the salutary influence of fresh air and less apprehensive that epidemic diseases and catarrhs of all denominations are waiting for admission outside our homes. In my early youth we wore warm nightcaps, silk and woollen, enclosing ourselves in four-posters surmounted by canopies and surrounded by dense curtains. Now we leave apertures in our casements through the night, except during frost and storm, and though we are more indulgent than our fathers in the matter of bedroom fires, our dormitory is much brighter, lighter, and airier than theirs. We were scrupulous, but not so enthusiastic as now, in our ablutions. We met with early discouragements. We were doused and scrubbed with a rude manipulation which seemed to us to be ferocious, and there was a special ceremony in our childhood performed at intervals, and known to us as "tub night," which was conducted with a recklessness in the distribution of soap-suds about our mouths and eyes and a severity of friction in the application of towels that resulted on a memorable occasion in my sudden exodus from the nursery, downstairs into the garden, and my capture, after a brief but lively chase, in a clump of rhododendrons. There were bathrooms, which included the showerbath, principally used for the drenching of strange children whom we beguiled to enter, but there were few companions of the bath. There was an abundance of basins and pans, but the bountiful hip-bath (which prevents the disappointment, known to some of us, of stealthily approaching, in unbecoming costume, the distant lavatory, to find it occupied), the capacious sponge, the soft Turkish towel, were sixty years ago unknown. Even then we were the cleanliest of the nations; and I recall a clever little sketch made half a century ago in which the English hostess addresses a foreign visitor, "My dear Count, I am sorry to see that you are not in your health." "Ah, no," the noble invalid makes answer, "I have done one very foolish thing-I wash my neck." Chiefly, in contrasting Now and Then with regard to ablutions, we may congratulate ourselves on the institution of public baths and washhouses. An Act was passed in 1843 empowering municipal and parochial |