Sanitary Training

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 6, 1879

Sanitary Training.

The last two or three years has produced a buzzing swarm of sanitary quacks. They are not confined to any one department. Doctors, most of whom have never heard a lecture or read a sound text-book on hygiene, talk very freely about the needs of cleanliness and the methods of its promotion. Yet for accurate learning about the diffusion of gases, the laws of air circulation, the size of tubes, the chemistry of foods, etc., they know not a hundredth part of what they credit to themselves, or a thousandth of what they are credited by others. Engineers and plumbers are eloquent about their special modes of construction and the evils of sewer-gas, and often could not stand a half-hour examination on any of the subjects of which they speak. Disinfectants are spread abroad by the ton and lauded ad nauseam by those who cannot explain their action, but could explain their money interest in the sale.

Now, all this must not lead to any abatement of zeal and earnest inquiry, for all needs to be done that is claimed. The science, the art, the facts, the needs are all known to some and are discernible and certified. The need is that competency be tested. Cities seeking expert aid must bring their employes to the most rigid proof of fitness. Individuals must get written statements of changes proposed and submit them to other experts. It must not be allowed that so critical and real an interest be imperiled by the haphazard experiments of self-confident novices. We credit experience for all it is worth; but no mere skill of workmanship or claim of practical knowledge will substitute that exact knowledge of physical laws on which sanitary art so much depends. The public greatly needs standards of reference. We are glad to see a proposition for a plumbers' school at Cooper Institute, where technical sanitary instruction can be given to mechanics who have gone into their trade without any such training. One is equally needed for doctors who have never heard a lecture on hygiene, but have started practice with the idea that so simple a knowledge can be picked up and peddled out as a kind of perfunctory and patronizing free-gratis advice to their patients, while they are showing their skill in prescribing. Let us for doctors, and architects, and engineers, and plumbers, etc., have a sanitary course and a sanitary diploma, which shall give certified evidence of competency.—Independent.