FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 755 



FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE. 



Paris, France, Jan'y 22, 1878. 

 There is a decided taste for hygienic studies, and, what is not less im- 

 portant, of applying their lessons. The science of hygiene is not intended 

 to supersede doctors, but to increase the well-being of peoples and of indi- 

 viduals, by augmenting the robustness of their bodies, and consequently the 

 strength of their minds. The role of hygienists is not altogether confined 

 to preserving us from maladies, for there are several very terrible diseases 

 that we are powerless to counteract ; still, before destroying the germs of 

 maladies it is prudent on the part of man to endeavor to resist them with 

 success. Moses and Mahomet deserve special honor for the accuracy with 

 which they formulated sanitary rules for public and private life of Oriental 

 people. Perhaps it would be well in the case of Islamism that the verses 

 of the Koran were applied more frequently than they are relocated. The 

 jDagan societies of Greece and Rome have leagued us many important 

 hygienic precepts : in the amplitude of their clothing, which left to the ar- 

 ticulations and muscles ail their suppleness and liberty of action, and in their 

 ablutions, which acted as a tonic for the skin and imparted a general im- 

 I^ulsion to the organic functions. The love of the ancients for gymnastic 

 and other corporeal exercises is proverbial, and in their considering Prome- 

 theus as the first gymnast, in addition to viewing him as the creator of 

 men, it was merely implied that he developed and renewed life by inculca- 

 ting the importance of physical exercise. Dr. LeBlond not only advocates 

 but prescribes gymnastics as a curative agent, and the means best calculated 

 to develop the physique of each individual, following sex, age, temperament 

 and profession ; to produce in a word, "the soul of a sage in the body of an 

 athlete." 



Since the municipality of Paris has fallen asleep over the proposed me- 

 tropolitan cemetery, the project of cremation is making rapid progress. 

 Opinion is certainly on the point of reclaiming, that a family be allowed the 

 right to incinerate or inhume its dead. The practice of the Middle Ages, 

 in burying the dead beneath the flags of an aisle, is not a whit more insal- 

 ubrious than interments in church yards in the midst of the living. In 

 1760, Yoltaire complained that "there was not a defunct who did not, more 

 or less, contribute to poison his country." Citizens do not follow that phi- 

 losopher in his rapture of the pleasure it would be for his fellow-countrymen 

 "to enrich some of the sterile plains of France, and so contribute to abund- 

 ant harvests; generations would thus become more useful to each other ; 

 the towns more healthy, and the fields more fruitful." 



Professor Yalin continues to demonstrate the necessity of isolation of the 

 sick, as the most effectual plan for checking the propagation of contagious 



