754 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



PHENOMENA. 



On the evening of the 19th Venus and Saturn will be in conjunction; Saturn 

 will be to the south of Venus 1° 53'. The moon will be close to Jupiter on the 

 same evening. 



On the 28th, the Moon will pass south of Uranus 6° 17'. 



MEDICINE AND HYGIENE. 



THE SANITARY LEGISLATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 



Strange as it may sound, legislation concerning public health is not entirely 

 a notion of this nineteenth century, sprung from the brain of the Southwood 

 Smiths and the Chadwicks. Ages before the Society for the Diffusion of Useful 

 Knowledge or the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain came into being, we find 

 regulations on sanitary subjects, not merely proposed but formally enacted, in- 

 vested with the most solemn sanctions of religion, and inseparably interwoven 

 with the customs and polity of a remarkable people. These regulations, which 

 have attracted surprisingly little notice considering that they are met with in a 

 book which has, more than any other, been closely scrutinized both by its friends 

 and its enemies, are, we think, not unworthy of attention from a scientific point 

 of view. They agree most strikingly with the results of modern research, both 

 in the recognition of danger and the precepts laid down for its removal or avoid- 

 ance, and they are in too many respects far in advance of our actual practice. 

 We propose to examine these laws, not from the position of the archaeologist, the 

 orientalist, or the divine, but simply from that of one interested in Sanitary 

 Science. If we find that Moses has anticipated certain of our modern oracles, we 

 shall not seek to explain so suggestive — and to some persons unwelcome — a coin- 

 cidence. The question whether or no some of the laws which we shall quote 

 may not also have other and possibly even higher meanings we must leave to be 

 discussed elsewhere. We think meantime that no one who has carefully traced 

 the history of the human mind need feel surprised or offended at finding precepts 

 on bodily health presented as under Divine sanction. 



We will first call attention to the subject of blood. Nothing is more emphat- 

 ically and repeatedly forbidden in the Books of Moses than its use as an article 

 of food. What is the reason of this prohibition, which, as most people know, is 

 very scrupulously obeyed by the Jews down the present day ? Theologians will 

 perhaps pardon us if we submit that this has, in addition to other possible mean- 

 ings, a physiological import which has in these days been too frequently lost sight 

 of, even by many medical men. The enactment is surely in complete harmony 

 with the teachings of modern science. We know that the circulatory system has 



