Gr. H. F. Nuttall 
417 
“ They transfer, by a process of sympathetic magic, the productivity of 
the lice to the lousy.” Shipley adds that similar views prevail in parts 
of India and the East. My late friend Dr John Hewetson (1894, p. 19) 
records the case of an Austrian ex-soldier who was admitted as a patient to 
the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, the man objected to the removal 
of the hair and Phthirus pubis from his body because he believed the latter 
brought “luck to the bearer and each [louse] sells for 5-10 kreuzers among 
the soldiers. They had been carefully carried by him for ten years.” 
It is clear from the foregoing that education is essential in the cam- 
paign against pediculosis. 
Cleanliness and Measures which promote it. 
“A louse is a worme wit h many fete, & it commeth out of the filthi and onclene 
skywne... .To withdryue them /The best is for to wasshe the oftentimes, and to 
chaunge oftentymes clene lynen.” (Quoted by F. J. Furnivall in his edition of The 
Bool; of Quinte Essence (a.t>. 1460-1470), London, 1866, p. 19, footnote.) 
The statement that with the spread of Christianity “the louse 
commenced to enjoy most exceptional privileges” (Knott, 1905, p. 188) 
may be questioned by historians, but it is doubtless true. The cleanly 
habits of the Romans, to which history and still existing monuments 
bear convincing evidence, were succeeded in the dark ages by a return 
to unhygienic conditions which persisted through many centuries. The 
dark ages were likewise “the age of the louse.” Certain saints that are 
reputed to have never washed, that let their unkempt beards attain 
legendary lengths, that practised self-denial by living in filth and 
squalor, and wearing a single garment of dirty rags, may have been 
good examples to their fellow men in moral matters; but they were not 
so in matters physical and we must suppose that close companionship 
with them had its drawbacks. A long time elapsed before it was taught 
that not filthiness but cleanliness is next to godliness. The epoch ex¬ 
tending from the dark ages down to our time might well be termed the 
great dark age of filth by a Roman. The advice given to Michelangelo 
by his father, never to wash but to rub himself with a dry towel, is on 
a par with what we know of some historical personages almost down to 
the present day. A large proportion of our population has long been 
called “the great unwashed” because this is literally true. 
Bathrooms in dwelling houses are but an innovation of recent 
decades, the vast majority of the population enjoy no bathing facilities 
whatever unless, at some personal inconvenience, they seek the public 
bathing establishments which some towns provide. Indeed, the first 
