682 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



There was a time when such notions seem to have 

 been generally prevalent. A few hundred years back, 

 the streets of London were in a worse condition than 

 the backyard referred to,— a cordial invitation for the 

 Great Plague, which came in due time. According to 

 an eminent European authority, personal cleanliness 

 was for a thousand years so universally disregarded 

 ''that scarce a man, woman, or child throughout Eu- 

 rope made a practice of daily ablution. During this 

 carnival of filth, again and again the Black Death rav- 

 aged European countries. In the reign of Justinian, 

 as Gibbon records, a large proportion of the human 

 race was swept away by an epidemic which, with but 

 slight intermissions, raged for fifty years. In Con- 

 stantinople, one thousand grave-diggers, in constant 

 employ, could not hide away fast enough the victims 

 of this dreadful disorder. We have all been made 

 acquainted, through the ghastly i^icture drawn by 

 Boccaccio, with the fearful plague that desolated Flor- 

 ence in the fourteenth century, and by Defoe, with the 

 ravages of the Great Plague in London." 



Wlien spring approaches, it is important to be on 

 the lookout for possible sources of air contamination 

 when the winter ice is melted, and the conditions favor- 

 able for decomposition are developed. Let every nook 

 and corner of the house, the cellar, the backyard, and 

 the entire premises be thoroughly inspected so as to 

 eradicate every possible source for germs to germinate 

 and multiply. The germ question has come to be an 

 intensely practical one; and everybody ought to know 

 enough about it to be fully awake to the danger from 

 this source, and anxious to take every precaution to 

 escape injury themselves and secure safety to others. 



