112 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 





e^r^^-^- 



'^' S' I-.; :» lir '" "^^^^ ■■ 



... rn 



The Bridge over the Street. 



plan and organize the exposition, was in no department of the exhibition 

 better shown than in the historical division. There was to be no mere 

 comparison between what hygiene is now and that which it represented 

 fifty years ago, but the problem before the organizers was to trace the 

 whole history of hygiene from the remotest beginnings to the present 

 time and to illustrate this gradual evolution by pictures, models and 

 objects, actually dating from those times. 



Among the prehistoric Kelto-germanic exhibits could be seen food- 

 stuffs, etc., dating from the stone age. A wall picture from a slightly 

 later period displayed the remarkable fact that the wasp-like waist so 

 much admired on the part of the female sex to-day had been already the 

 ambition of the prehistoric woman. To ward off disease by the wearing 

 of amuletes was already then in vogue. 



Prehistoric Babylon shows that, in these remote times, the most 

 detailed precautions were already taken for keeping all sorts of insects 

 off from food articles, especially during the serving of them. The 

 hygienic tendencies of old Babylon are shown in the technique employed 

 in the construction of their wells, canalizations, bathing establishments, 

 latrines and burial systems. The practise of isolating cases of infectious 

 disease, of cleaning food-stuffs before they were eaten and of setting 

 aside a fixed number of days for rest and recreation, was already then 

 commonly observed in Mesopotamia. 



The significance of old Jewish hygiene is abundantly shown, in the 

 directions on the treatment of articles of food, the regulation for sexual 

 intercourse, the treatment of excrements, burial rites, instituting the 

 regular sabbath which has conquered the world, the priestly inspection 

 of lepers, preserved in old and time-honored rolls of the Tora and 

 further illustrated by sketches, photographs and models. 



In prehistoric Egypt, the manifest tendency of preserving the 

 human body after death for a future life in an unchanged form is 



