818 
W. H. DALRYMPLE. 
That such a perfect knowledge of these laws is not likely to be 
obtained, or rather, if obtained, is not likely to be acted upon, 
we can have no reasonable doubt; the value of health will never 
be generally appreciated, and the serious losses occasioned by 
disease seem only too readily effaced from the public mind. 
The name hygiene has been adopted from the French, 
from which language it has been introduced into most modern 
tongues ; it is derived from a Greek word meaning health. 
Hygeia was the goddess of health. 
Writings on health are among the oldest in the world, for 
the subject has engaged the attention of the profoundest think¬ 
ers and the most renowned leaders of men. We have only to 
point to the elaborate directions of the Mosaic laws for the 
preservation of health through scrupulous attention to cleanli¬ 
ness, the isolation of the sick, and extreme care in the use of 
wholesome articles of food and drink. Throughout the whole 
of their history the Jews enjoyed a remarkable immunity from 
epidemic diseases, the most of the instances in-which such 
disease occurred being represented as those in which they de¬ 
parted from the law, and doubtless relaxed the wholesome vigi¬ 
lance enjoined by it. In mediaeval and modern history they 
have often, even down to our own time, been spared the rav¬ 
ages of epidemics, when their Christian neighbors were perish¬ 
ing around them. Ignorant superstition often gave rise to the 
idea that they had poisoned the wells, and they fell victims to 
the fanaticism of the times. It is highly probable that the pe¬ 
riodical cleansing of their dwellings, involved in the thorough 
search for the leaven which preceded the yearly passover, had 
a notable influence in preventing that continuous deposition of 
organic matter, which is no doubt one of the most powerful 
factors in the production of zymotic disease. On the other 
hand, the filthy habits of the Christian populations offered a pre¬ 
mium to plagues of every kind ; for there is no parallel in 
ancient history to the terrible invasions of disease which from 
time to time ravaged Europe down to quite recent times. 
It is the province of hygiene to seek out and determine the 
