ORIGIN OF THERAPEUTIC BATHING 205 



ization it is not even economically possible. Those who 

 have read the books of George Gissing may remember 

 that he answered the assertion that the poor might at 

 least be clean by exclaiming, with bitter truth, that 

 cleanliness was an expensive luxury. Among many of 

 the agricultural and pastoral peasantry of Britain a man is 

 washed all over twice, or at most three times, in his life : 

 once when he is born, once when he is married, though 

 this is not universal, and once when he is dead. Yet 

 bathing before marriage in many cases is practically a 

 magic ceremony, and since magic dates from the remotest 

 period it might be supposed to remain as ritual. There is 

 no doubt that the washing of children at birth was also 

 anciently purificatory. The role that blood, especially the 

 blood of women, has played in the history of lustration is 

 very remarkable. That the corpse is also washed after 

 death is, of course, also the remains of a ceremony of puri- 

 fication. But if it is a fact that washing in its origin was 

 due to religion and magic, as seems certain, how did it 

 begin at all ? It may seem absurd to ask such a question ; 

 but the more we know of anthropology, which is but the 

 study of man in the making, the more it is seen that all 

 apparently natural processes must have had a beginning, 

 and require an explanation. It has often been observed 

 that even the instincts themselves are not perfect, and 

 require experience and education. One of the very deepest 

 and most ancient, that of sex, is certainly not least in need 

 of it. One need not read Havelock Ellis to discover so 

 much, seeing that many of those engaged in obstetrical prac- 

 tice have assisted at deliveries in which the infant in the 

 act of birth destroyed the unbroken hymen. Education 

 is not only needed with the sexual instinct ; but, if Horace 

 Fletcher and Doctor Chittenden and Sir Michael Foster 



