CLEANLINESS IS CONDUCIVE TO LIFE.
WHEN men, skilled tho they may be in scientific and historical law, depart from the laws of cleanliness and hygiene which God by his Word and providence has shown is necessary to the maintenance of health, they will perish as truly as the ignorant of the Dark Ages. The New York Medical Record gives an illustration of this in a recent issue:— A Modern Epidemic of Medieval Type.
"A striking proof that the great plagues of antiquity and the middle ages are kept away only by modern sanitary measures is furnished by the epidemic of typhoid fever now raging at Maidstone in England. In this town of thirty-two thousand souls there are more than thirteen hundred cases of typhoid fever, the greater proportion of them among the well-to-do. The streets are nearly deserted, the shops are closed, the church bells are silent. The origin of the epidemic is most evident, and the presence of the disease is a disgrace to the sanitary authorities. Ninety-six per cent. of all the cases have been traced to one water supply, which receives the drainage from a field where there was an encampment of hop pickers. The first cases of the fever occurred just two weeks after the hop pickers arrived from London. These people were huddled together like sheep and lived under frightfully insanitary conditions, more like swine than human beings. The attention of the authorities has been called to this state of affairs in previous years during the hop-picking season, but they did nothing to avert the danger."