PUBLIC AND PRIVATE HEALTH. 347 



making the best of our own circumstances, for the strength, im- 

 provement and enjoyment of the organism. It chooses a healthful 

 place to live in; keeps clean the person and the house; superintends 

 diet and clothing, and all that belongs to cheer; and aims also to 

 keep the mind easy. In short, it is the analysis and perfection of 

 boclykeeping and housekeeping. But it stops for the most part with 

 the front door. It gives you the best of everything, but without 

 insuring the goodness of the best. You can have excellent meat 

 and wine on this principle, if the town supplies them; good air, if 

 the neighborhood be favorable; good drainage, if there is a natural 

 outfall, and the sea washes up conveniently to carry away your 

 refuse. This private health is the property of the strong, the vigor- 

 ous, the wealthy and the fortunate, who have the pick of circum- 

 stances, and are the favorites of the hour; but even with them it 

 is casual and impure, not the maximum of the public health, but the 

 minimum of the public inconvenience and disease. It is like a high 

 hill at whose base the fever-vapors curl and steam, and whose top 

 they threaten to invade, and by subtle fears do invade, and some 

 one or other of its inhabitants drops down ever and anon, shot by 

 invisible arrows from beneath. That superior vigor of mankind 

 which seems to need no tending, and to burn like fine wax without 

 scientific trimming, is the subject of this private health, which is no 

 system or doctrine, but a resource of carnal virtue and goodness 

 above, and in spite of, the elements. Nature has done what she 

 can in producing the robust individuals who belong to this class, but 

 it is committed to ourselves to enlarge the class until it embraces 

 everybody. 



The science of public health undertakes this task, and aims to do 

 for everybody what it seems nobody's vocation to do for himself. 

 Private weakness and impotence is its field of operations ; the want 

 of virtue in persons is what it has to compensate. It knows of 

 houses only as little dots in streets, and streets only as fine lines in 

 towns. In short it looks from the community at individuals, and 

 is necessarily tyrannous until its work is done, after which freedom 

 of a new kind breathes everywhere. It washes the foulest faces 

 first, strikes at the Stygian neighborhoods, keeps company with 

 publicans and sinners, and always begins where it left off, with the 



