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Sanitary Legislation of the Pentateuch. [October, 
V. THE SANITARY LEGISLATION OF THE 
PENTATEUCH. 
TRANGE as it may sound, legislation concerning public 
health is not entirely a notion of this nineteenth cen- 
tury, sprung from the brain of the Southwood Smiths 
and the Chadwicks. Ages before the Society for the Diffu- 
sion of Useful Knowledge or the Sanitary Institute of Great 
Britain came into being we find regulations on sanitary 
subjects not merely proposed but formally enafted, invested 
with the most solemn sandlions 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 scrutinised, 
both by its friends and its enemies, are, we think, not un- 
worthy 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 avoidance, and they are in too many 
respe(5ts far in advance of our adtual practice. We propose 
to examine these laws, not from the position of the archaeo- 
logist, 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 un- 
welcome — a coincidence. 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 dis- 
cussed 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 emphatically 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 
to the present day ? Theologians will perhaps pardon us if 
we submit that this has, in addition to other possible 
meanings, a physiological import which has in these days 
been too frequently lost sight of, even by many medical men. 
