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MRS. ANNA L. COLCORD

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Jan 14, 1904

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 81, No. 2.

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MRS. ANNA L. COLCORD

By Mrs. Anna L. Colcord

Cleanliness

MRS. ANNA L. COLCORD

The whole subject of sanitary science may be comprehended in one word—cleanliness. Its meaning is “freedom from dirt, filth, or extraneous matter.”
The subject of cleanliness is one of the simplest and most intelligible of all the sciences. Its essentials are plenty of pure water, an abundance of fresh air and sunshine, together with attention and carefulness.
Poverty is no just excuse for uncleanliness. The poorest clothes may be kept clean, and the house, though ever so poor and meagerly furnished, may be kept cleanly and wholesome. More depends upon the character and habits of the people who occupy a house than upon the house itself. The story is told of an Irish landlord who removed his tenants from their mud huts into the beautiful dwellings he had erected for them. When he afterward visited his estate, his disappointment knew no bounds. The new houses were as dirty and untidy as the mud huts had been. The pig was still under the bed, and the hens on top of it. The beautiful concrete floors were as dirty as the mud ones had been. The windows were broken, and the yard had grown up full of weeds. The trouble was he had gone about his reformation in the wrong way. Reform, to be effectual, should begin in the individual. He should first have taught the people the beauty of cleanliness and comfort. Building new houses, making sewers, keeping public streets clean, etc., on the part of the state or municipal authorities, is not enough to insure health and cleanliness in a community.
If dirt and the seeds of disease are allowed to accumulate about each separate home, all these things will avail but little. There must be active co-operation on the part of the people themselves. Each family and each individual must take a personal interest and exercise care in this matter. Otherwise little permanent results can be obtained.
Dirt is demoralizing and degrading. It is associated with drunkenness, wickedness, and crime. It is the dirty parts of the cities that are the dangerous parts. Just in proportion as people are orderly and cleanly, they are respectable.
Cleanliness promotes industry, comfort, thrift, health, patience, modesty, morality, and life, while uncleanliness tends to indolence, carelessness, poverty, indecency, disease, degradation, and death.
Cleanliness is one of the distinguishing features between civilization and barbarity. A nation progresses in civilization according to the habits of order and cleanliness practised by the people. One of the first steps toward civilizing a degraded man is to place him in a clean, healthy home, and teach him cleanly habits. This is generally one of the first things missionaries have to do when entering upon their work among the poor and degraded in our large cities and in heathen lands.
Habits of cleanliness in the daily life and surroundings are essential to good health, without which we can not attain to our brightest hopes and highest ambitions.
It is to a lack of knowledge of cleanliness and attention given to the little, common, yet most important things of daily life that thousands perish every year. A large per cent of the mortality of young children is due to uncleanliness as well as to improper diet. Such diseases as diphtheria, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, and others, which carry off their victims by the thousands and tens of thousands, originate from preventable causes. They come as a consequence of a violation of the laws of cleanliness.
About three years ago the bubonic plague broke out in several of the large cities of Australia. The doctors who spoke and wrote on it termed it a strictly “filth disease,” and the remedy prescribed for its removal was to “clean up.” Accordingly large gangs of men were employed at great expense to the government to wash, cleanse, and sewer the dirty parts of the cities. Whole sections, in some instances, were burned down in order to clear out the rubbish and destroy plague-infected buildings. Disinfectants were used freely, and were furnished for use in the whole city, free of charge. Great fear took hold of the people, as no one knew but he would be the next to show symptoms of the dread disease, and be carried away to the pest house. Among other preventives recommended was a warm bath daily.
It was known that rats carried the disease. Accordingly a reward was offered for every rat caught, and large numbers of men were employed for the sole purpose of killing these rodents. The rats thus caught were taken charge of by the health officers, and were cremated. People almost feared to buy a bag of potatoes lest a rat infected with bubonic plague had been on them. The steamers arriving from other ports were kept at a distance from the wharves, and large tin funnels were placed on the hawsers, or cables, which held the boats in place, to prevent the rats getting from the shore on to the boats. It cost many thousands of dollars to clean up the cities and wipe out the plague.
Cleanliness of the body as well as of surroundings is essential to health. The surface of the body is provided with tiny openings called pores, which act as sewers to carry away the waste matter from the system. There are about two millions of these over the entire body. Unless obstructed, they are at work constantly. In order to feel bright and active, frequent bathing is necessary.
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