SANITATION.

King Country Chronicle, Volume III, Issue 194, 27 September 1909, Page 5

SANITATION.

The paper read wby Mr A. P. Bennett, District Health Inspector at Te Kuiti on Wednesday evening last, deals with an important subject, and should be of Interest to a wldw public. The paper which is entilted "The Mosaic Code and its relation to Modern Sanitation," is as follows: —

It would appear there was not a distinct department of public healthy in ancient Jade a. The charge of dealing with I.D. such as leprosy and epidemics of all kinds, was delegated to the priests. The Talmud mentiot.cd the office of a physician in tbe Temple whost< duty it was to took after the health of the High Priest. In latter timehowever, according to tbe Ta*mud, every town counted among its permanent officials a pbyiscian who supervised the circumcision of children and looked after the communal well being. A theological student was even forbidden to tive in a place where there was ono physician. The main provisions of the Mosaic Sanitary Law related to: I—the prevention of infectious disease; 2 —food and diet.; 3~~ Sewage and refuse disposal; 4 Domestic sanitation ablutions, baths and general cleanliness. Th* laws with reference to I.D. as laid down in Leviticus and Numbers seem to be based on the principle that, as I.D. are mostly communicated by contact, all cases of such are to be isolated, that alt contact. with any centre of infection is to be avoided, that when such contact in unavoidable circumstances had taken place there must be: Ist—segregation, to prevent the spread of infection, and finally pouriflcation before the infected per ion could be readmitted ino society. It is welt known that the great scourge of the East was—and in many places in Egypt, Arabia, etc..still is— Leprosy, which doubtless inettf fed, in common partance many other forms of skin disease. The Mosaic Laws, therefore, lay down most stringent rules for preventing the spread o. this terrible malady by contagion or infection. Infected clothing was to be burnt; an infected house had to be emptied; the infected parts of the building removed and the watts scraped. Then if the infectious malady recurred the whole house had to be demolished and the materials removed to an unclean ptace outside the camp, and never used again. The Priest who seemed to have acted as District Health Officer and Sanitary Inspector combined, had to diagnose every suspicious case and to visit infected houses, and then finatly declare them clean or unclean.

Every corpse was considered & possible centre of infection, and those who touched a corpse, or who touched a grave, were regarded as unclean and had to purify themselves on the third day, and only on the 7th day were they declared clean, after having washed their clothes and bathed themselves in water. But the law was still more strict as regarded the priests. These were forbidden to come near a corpse under any fircumstances. except on the death of a near relative, namely, a parent, wife, child, brother or unmarried sister, and even in thsee exceptional circumstnces they had to be purified and remain apart for seven days. These laws irp still observed by the Jewish Cohamni or priests. The necessity for the prohibition to touch the dead in the interests of public health becomes obvious when we consifer that in ancient Egypt, the country where the Israelites had so long dwelt, the greatest pains were taken to preserve the bodies of the dead. The preservation of the body from decay was considered essential to the happiness of the departed soul. The chief books in the Egyptian literature were those relating to the funeral ritual. Before the tombs of the Egyptians altars were erected, and on these altars their relatives offered sacrifices The privilege of boria! was not allowed to all; poor people who died in debt were refused burial, and at one time a credtior could make a debtor give as security the mommy of bi» father, and thus we see the evil resulting from the gigantic corpse traffic, and the danger to pubtic health it involved. As far as the touching of a grave is concerned, it is well known that outbreaks of plague often resulted from the opening of old graves in which persons sufficing from this di-

sease bad been buried many years before. Dr Tubermuster relates that tie found many graves in Eastern coontries with an inscription upon them: "Whosoever opens this grave will sorely die." No wonder then that Bloses commanded, as a precaution against epidemics, and infectious diseases: "Whosoever touchcth one that is stain with the sword in the open field- or a dead body, or a bone of a man, or a grave, shall b® unclean seven days." Besides the precautions of isolation quarantine ablutions etc.. the tent, furniture and all articles which had been exposed to infection were to be disinfected. The manner in which the process of disinfection is described reads rather like a passage from a modern sanitary text book than from a book written perhaps 3WO or 4000 years ago. Here is the text Number*— XIX —'14: "This is the law, when a man dieth in a tent, all that come into the tent, and alt that is in the tent shall be unclean seven days. And every open vessel that bath no covering bound upon it » unclean. And a clean person shall take hyssop and dip it in water and sprinkle it upon the tent, and upon all the vessel* and upon the persons that were there and upon htm that toucheth a bone, or one slain, or one dead, or a grave." Modern sanitarians might prefer to | disinfect a house with carbolic acid, sulphur or Formalin than with the biblical caperbush hyssop, but that this hyssop possessed great disinfecting properties and was very likely the best disinfectant of the time, modern established beyownd doubt. And thus we are driven to the conclusion that if the laws of Moms were not Inspired by Divine wisdom. Moses must have already been in possession of something akin to the gsrm theory of disesae at any rate, so far as his precaution* against infection are contented modern sanitation runs much on bis tines. —Food.— fli tews as to food might also be lis—nt ttwfcr the head of Sanitary

Law*, for they might fairly be considered to have been ordained in the interests of health—moral and physical. The Hebrews were forbidden to eat many things whieh were eaten by other nations. In the regulations concerning ! clean and onelean animals, they found that tbe flesh of carnivorous animal*, and certain other animals was forbidden. Serpents, creeping: insects, certain species of birds, fishes without scales and fins were all forbidden. The prohibition extended to all foods and liquids into which the dead body of any onelean animal bad fallen, and also to a kid boiled in the milk of its mother. The flesh of animals was also forbidden wbicb had either died a natural death or had been accidentally killed. The prohibition against eating blood, repealed in the Pentateuch no less than five times, exclusively belonged to the Mosaic Law. and must have been made on sanitary grounds, both in the immediate and wider sen * of the term. The immediate reason for thn prohibition so frequently repeated was probably because- blood was considered the likeliest vehicle for the vrtrsr.ee of the germs of disease in to the human system. . The further command to cover ail btood with earth, to disinfect it, lent additional ground to the supposition that blood was considered unclean from a sanitary point of view. It was not however, certain that this wa« the only reason, and that the prohibition was made solely on account of physical health. In the tight of modern science it might have a wider significance. We know from what we hear of experiments made in medical toriea with the object of {cJting the influence of certain narcotics, that what passes into the blood after the process of digestion often affects the brain, sometimes acting on the intellectual and "»ome times on the moral qualities of a person. Is it not po«i(i!p. thcrt that when the blood of a brute animal enters our body Same of the qualities of that same animal may become communicated to us, and debase and brutalize us.

A moral reason is* ab« given by a Jewish philosopher. Ababncil. for tin* prohibition to boil a kid in its motherV milk. as. he represents there is something cruel ami repugnant to natural sentiment in bolting a young animal in the milk that was intended for its own nourishment, although Maitr.onides. another great thinker of the 13th century, and himself a physician of eminence, considers the prohibition to be solely a sanitary one. as he regards tne mixture of flesh and milk as too indigestible a food. However that may be the rractice of the Jew.-* has always been not to mix flesh and milk food together.

Passing to the provision* made by Moses for the disposal of sewage and refuse : There is no direct indication in the Penatateuch about the methods in vogue in ancient Judea for the disposal of such matter. But. according to Josepbus Flavius, who wrote about 75 A.f>. and a later Biblical commentator, David Kimbi, perpetual fire* were kept up outside the gates of Jerusalem for the purpose of consuming the refuse of the city. If this were the ease then the problem of refuse disposal must have been solved in ancient Judea in as efficient a manner as in our own times, even in the most advanced countries. In the ancient Judean Public Health Act of about <ls© 8.C.. provision was also made for dealing with »tTen*ive trades. The Talniuduts regarded the laws of Health as of greater importance than those which were of a merely retualistic character. On account of Sakanah--danger—it was* forbidden to eat the meat of an animal that had eaten poison, or drunk water that had been left uncovered overnight. Perspiration was considered especially dangerous, and it was therefore forbidden to touch any part of the body which is usually covered or to carry bread under the arm where the perspiration is usually perfuse. Coins were not to be placed in th*> mouth as they might have been handled by a person suffering from an infectious or other disease. it was likewise forbidden to eat from unclean vessels or from vessels which had been used for unseemly purposes, !or to eat with dirty hands. The washing of the hands and face in the morning was considered very important.

There was also the custom of washing hands before and after meals. And thus we have gone through a portion of the past field of sanitary precaution?. rules and -rgulß'ions affecting both public and individual health covered by the Mosaic Uw. Many of these rules have been already included in the statutes of most civilised nations.others still remain inexplicable and perhaps quite unintelligible to the modem world. Is it on account of the enormous space of time separating us from ancient institutions or is it as some assert, because our chemical and biological knowledge is not yet sufficiently advanced, and they must remain a myst -ry till that knowledge is obtained. It is therefore quite evident from the foregoing evidence, that much as we may think that wo are burdened with Health laws, that in ancient Jtdea there was a more drastic set of taws than we have here the at present time and it is undoubtedly due ! to the Jews* strict observance of them ' that they are the virile race they are today. It is a fact that the Jews as a race, are remarkably healthy. Were not the Hebrew children at the court of Nebuchadnezzar remarkable for | their well favouredness —"Children in | whom is no blemish,"and now in Polish Russia, and in Austria the death rate of Christians compared to that of Jews, is as three to two. In Saxony the death rate was one Jew in fifty three, and one Chirstian in thirty three. In Frankfort 54 per cent, of Jews reach- ; eod TO years, while only 38 per cent, iofChristians reached that age. In Hungary the chances of life were: Croats 20 years; Germans, 27 years; Jews 45 years. 1 think the fulfitmeot of the blessing is reached, vis.: "That it may go well with thee and thy children and that I thou mayest prolong thy days upon the earth."- -Dent V. "That ye may be strong and prolong your days in the land."— Deut XII.