NOVEMBER 26, 1897.] 
out the gates of their settlement, to warn 
strangers of the prevalence of an epidemic 
among men or beasts within. The natives 
of the island of Keisar interdict mar- 
riage with lepers, evidently believing that 
leprosy is not contagious but is transmitted 
by heredity, while the natives of the Watu_ 
bela islands believe the converse and trans- 
port their lepers to Gorong for isolation and 
treatment. 
The practice of isolating contagious dis- 
ease, especially during epidemics, appears 
to be quite common. Thus, at the island 
of Nias small-pox patients are sent to a 
temporary shelter outside of the camp and 
placed in charge of a relative, protected by 
a previous attack. The Traos of Cochin 
China, the Tunguse and Burates abandon 
their small-pox patients after providing 
them with boiled rice and water. Some of 
the Indian tribes in northern Mexico also 
abandon their contagious cases after plac- 
ing water and wild fruits within easy reach. 
But, to return to the Aryan race, we find 
that the Greeks and Romans, although not, 
like the Jews, making hygiene a part of 
their religious duty, paid special attention 
to the physical culture of their youth, en- 
deavoring, by a rational care of the body, 
to promote the culture of their mind, and 
to secure freshness and energy, courage, 
presence of mind, grace and dignity. ‘‘ The 
laws of Lycurgus,”’ says Dr. Gardner, ‘‘are 
not wanting in very pointed enactments on 
sanitary matters, and the importance at- 
tached by all the Greek republics and in 
the Platonic ideal polity to physical culture 
is too well known to require further com- 
ment ;” they paid, also, much attention to 
the water-supply, constructed numerous 
aqueducts, and Athens was provided with 
sewers at an early period of its history. 
The teachings of Hippocrates, 400 B. C., 
doubtless bore many fruits, and whether it 
is true or not, as stated by Galen, that he 
ordered, during a pestilence at Athens, aro- 
SCIENCE. TO 
matic fumigation and large fires in the 
streets, we have at least his writings on air, 
water, soil, habitations and occupations and 
his views of local and seasonal influences 
on sporadic and epidemic diseases. In 
Homer’s Odyssey reference is made to 
Ulysses purifying his house with burning 
sulphur, and Aristotle in his Politica shows 
his sanitary acumen when he says: ‘“ The 
greatest influence upon health is exerted by 
those things which we most freely and 
frequently require for our existence, and 
this is especially true of water and air.’ 
The Romans, amidst their military opera- 
tions, found time to construct the ‘ Cloaca 
maxima’ about 2,400 years ago, which not 
only served for the removal of refuse, but 
also helped to drain many of the marshes, 
and constitutes the principal sewer of mod- 
ern Rome. Aqueducts were made to cover 
miles upon miles of the surrounding plains, 
and their splendid ruins, many of which 
have been restored and are now used for 
their original purpose,attest the munificence 
and abundance with which the first of san- 
itary requisites was supplied to the Eternal 
City. At one time Rome had 14 large and 
20 small aqueducts, some of which carried 
the water from a distance of 50 kilometers, 
and during the reigns of Tiberius and Nero 
the per capita supply was over 1,400 liters 
a day. It is stated that between 400 B. C. 
and 180 A. D. about 800 public baths were 
established, among them the ‘ Thermae Car- 
acalle,’ which alone could accommodate 
3,000 bathers at one time. It has often 
been charged, how justly I cannot say, 
that one of the first things the Christians 
did in Rome was to try to tear down the 
baths and convert them into churches ; but 
when we see in our own midst the attempt 
to convert these useful institutions into 
abodes of vice, we can imagine how, with a 
licentious people like the Romans, their 
baths had degenerated into hotbeds of in- 
iquity. 
