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These could not be allowed to stand in an age which studies the science and practises the art of hygiene. Yet the traveler who wants to know what the old Geneva was really like must spend a morning or two rambling among them before they are pulled down.
Educators of course share this attitude; at moments they seem to intensify it, although at last an educational movement in the direction of sex hygiene is beginning in the schools and colleges.
They cannot hope at present to achieve any great success among the poorest workers. The fact must not be shirked that in preaching thrift, hygiene, morality, and religion to the dwellers in the courts and alleys of our great cities, we are sowing seed upon a barren ground. Certain isolated cases of success must not blind us to this truth. Take, for example, thrift.
It may be a matter of opinion which of the two social evils, illegitimacy in the country or prostitution in the city, has the larger influence upon the spread of mental abnormalities, but there can be no doubt that the rural difficulty deserves the attention of all interested in mental hygiene. It is unfortunate that rural people do not realize more often the serious meaning of feeble-mindedness.
The Institute of Hygiene deals with topics not very remote from those studied in the Virchow Institute, part of its work, indeed, falling clearly within the scope of pathology; but it differs in being clearly comprehensible to the general public and of immediate and tangible interest from the most strictly utilitarian stand-point, hygiene being, in effect, the tangible link between the more abstract medical sciences and the affairs of every-day life.
One is enabled to see why and how obedience to hygienic laws benefits, and disobedience to them injures, the body. This causes the teachings of hygiene to be taken more seriously and renders them more practical. In short, anatomy and physiology supply a necessary basis for the study of hygiene.
Every pupil should be instructed to fall naturally into an attitude of attention when coming into the presence of the teacher as much so as in the presence of a distinguished host or hostess. Morale, esprit de corps, cannot be instilled too soon. They may well be considered psychical elements in general vocal hygiene. Personal cleanliness is, of course, one of the first requisites to health.
I then went on, beginning with the rise and progress of the primitive religions, and coming down to the various religions of the present time, during which time I labored to show Queequeg that all these Lents, Ramadans, and prolonged ham-squattings in cold, cheerless rooms were stark nonsense; bad for the health; useless for the soul; opposed, in short, to the obvious laws of Hygiene and common sense.
Now at this point it seems to us that we hear timorous people and those of narrow views rising up against our idea of hygiene in the name of morality and sentiment. "Is not woman endowed with a soul? Has she not feelings as we have?
Again I began to grow introspective and melancholy, and soon had a return of all my symptoms of old. They all came trooping in to pay me a visit for the sake of auld lang syne. How should I treat them? To get rid of unwelcome visitors often requires study and tact. I had tried about all the "health and hygiene" rules that had ever been invented.
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