332 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I was glad to read, in the report of the Geographical Section of the 

 British Association meeting at Sheffield, that several travelers from 

 Africa had said a good word for the cannibals. I should like to do 

 the same for the cannibals and non-cannibals of New Guinea. I have 

 visited a great many villages, in most of which no white man had been 

 before ; my wife and I were for a time the only Europeans living on 

 the island, but I have never been molested anywhere. We are known 

 along the coast as the bearers of peace. As I went through one of the 

 villages for the first time, a native from another ran before us and 

 shouted, " These are the maino taunas (the peace-men), who bring and 

 make peace everywhere ! " Confidence begets confidence, and there 

 is a wondrous power in human kindness. 



SANITARY RELATIONS OF THE SOIL.- 



By Dr. MAX VON PETTENKOFEIJ. 



I. 



I AM well aware that I have chosen no new theme when I assume to 

 speak of our soil and its relations to our health. It is, on the con- 

 trary, very old for Hippocrates wrote two thousand years ago on air, 

 water, and earth in their hygienic relations but there are old subjects 

 that are always awakening a new interest, and always appear fresh 

 when considered in a new light or frcm a new side. To these eter- 

 nally fresh subjects belongs that of the ground on which we stand and 

 live, on which we are born, and in which we are to be buried. Since 

 mankind has comprehended the idea of health, sickness-giving and 

 health-promoting properties have been ascribed to the locality, which 

 has been regarded as consisting of air, water, and earth ; but the seat 

 of that which makes sick and makes well has been supposed to be more 

 in the air and water and less in the soil ; that is, it has been conceived 

 that a place might have its own air and its own water which we have 

 to use directly in breathing and drinking, while we could be independ- 

 ent of the soil, on which we only tread. The local air could, however, 

 hold the first place in hygienic regimen only as long as it was not 

 known that the average velocity of the atmosphere over the surface of 

 the earth is three metres (or ten feet) in a second, and that, even when 

 we feel that it is perfectly calm, the air is moving at the rate of a half- 

 metre (or twenty inches) in a second. A real stagnation of the air, 

 even in deep cloves and valleys, or in the narrowest streets, is not to be 

 spoken of ; the air is rather to be conceived as undergoing a constant 



" An address delivered before the Association of German Naturalists and Physicians, 

 at Salzburg, September IS, 1881. 



