critical limiting point below which soils begin to exercise any filtering action probably verges on the size of grain in an impalpable powder.

"From these results it appears very clearly sand interposes absolutely no barrier between wells and the bacterial infection from cesspools, cemeteries, &c., lying even at great distances in the lower wet stratum of sand. And it appears probable that a dry gravel, or possibly a dry, very coarse sand, interposes no barrier to the free entrance into houses built upon them, of these organisms which swarm in the ground-air around leaching cesspools, leaky drains, &c., or in the filthy made ground of cities.

"And from the results obtained from the two series of experiments, viz., in filtering air and in filtering water, we can now draw one very important practical conclusion, which cannot be too strongly emphasized: That a house may be built on a thoroughly dry body of sand or gravel, and its cellar may be far above the level of the ground water at all times, and it may yet be in danger of having the air of its rooms contaminated by the germs from leaching cesspools and vaults; for, if the drift of the leaching be towards the cellar, very wet seasons may extend the polluted moisture to the cellar walls, whence, after evaporation, the germs will pass into the atmospheric circulation of the house."

The apparatuses in which the experiments were conducted are shown by the illustrations.

HYGIENE AND ITS RELATION TO MEDICATION.

BY BUSHROD W. JAMES, M.D.

Hygiene and medication are at the present day two vast fields of research with abrupt border lines, widely separated by a territory over whose surface are ever seen the fearful contests of life with the dire monster, disease. Humanity, struggling with imperfect knowledge, is beset with innumerable snares and nets, and hidden traps, that deceive and afflict it with insidious poisonings, and tortures from pain, and grief, and sorrow.

Hygiene, with the finger of warning, points out the paths that will lead to an inevitable contest with disease, while medicine extends the helping hand to the unfortunates that have already fallen wounded in the strife. The former aims to secure the perfection of the mental and physical powers to insure the greatest amount of vigor and normal growth, and to effect the postponement of decay, suffering and death until the remotest period. The latter accepts the fact of abnormal conditions, impairment of physical functions and structures, the presence of partial decay, and at once sets about restoring the system to its accustomed standard of activity and usefulness. Hygiene in its true sense embraces the application of State or national codes of health laws and their enforcement by such rigor that continual healthfulness and longevity may be secured to the largest number of inhabitants. These include the prevention of epidemics from without, and the immediate limiting of them when occurring within the national borders. It looks to the education of the intellect and physical powers to their highest degree, without overtaxing either. It takes up the subject of parental fitness for the propagation of the race, and should prevent the marriage or intermarriage of unhealthy and feeble persons affected with hereditary diseases whose offspring will naturally be very short lived, puny and unfit for great mental or

physical development, and who will be only sufferers themselves, and a care and burden to others. The offspring of such persons can be of no aid to the general progress towards the true hygienic perfection of the race. In this category I will include confirmed consumptives and those afflicted with carcinoma, syphilis, leprosy, epilepsy and imbecility.

It further looks to the establishment of general sanitary principles which will enable communities to adopt measures that will prevent their citizens from being poisoned by their own emanations and excretions. It fosters the organizations that are working assiduously to enlighten the people upon sanitary subjects and encourages them all, from the local health inspector in a town or village to the governmental board vested with weighty authority to ward off from the nation pestilential diseases, or to insure the stamping out of them, in the event of their inroad or development at home. It also generously offers to sister communities or nations the advantages of any improvements or discoveries that are being made by means of a general publication of the facts. It takes up the work of the physiologist and from the determinations he has been able to verify, draws conclusions and lays down definite health laws for individuals, for corporations, and for the State and nation to abide by, if the most desirable results as to longevity and physical perfection are desired. The later of the more modern investigators have given us many valuable contributions as to the quality and quantity of drinking water which we should use, and of its method of purification by filtration or otherwise. It defines the proper quantity of pure or comparatively pure air we should breathe, and shows us the different methods of ridding it of suspended matters and noxious gases, and the best manner of supplying it to our dwellings and halls of assemblage by systematic ventilation. The food question has likewise been considered by modern investigators both as to principles of diet and also as to the quantity and quality of food to be partaken of both by the invalid and the healthy. The value of the various foods have been pointed out as to wholesomeness, digestibility and amount of vital energy to be obtained from each. The matter of their preparation by cooking or other modes has also received due consideration. The

conditions governing the construction of habitations and the means of warming and ventilating them are generally understood by the student of hygiene, and he is also not unmindful of the influence of proper exercise, as well as clothing, temperature, and humidity of climate and soil influences upon health; likewise, the proper rapid removal of excreta, garbage and sewage is more accurately understood than ever before.

Now, man has certainly been given sufficient intelligence to choose between the use of the means that tend to his physical improvement and those that act injuriously upon him and have the tendency to destroy his physical development and happiness. Therefore, he should abide by the laws that the science of hygiene lays down, that his own comfort and health may be subserved as well as that of his neighbors and his posterity. The father should see to it that no abuses, excesses or habits, or willfully impaired health of his own are transmitted to his offspring. He should be a healthy man to become a parent, and the mother should likewise be a specimen of normal functional activity, and especially during her pregnancy. These requirements being assumed (and if the sins of the generations before are not transmitted) the child will, by inference, in all probability approach towards physical perfection. The hygienic laws from its very birth govern that being through its future earthly existence, and it must conform to all the various surroundings to which I have referred, so that the vicissitudes of infant life may be safely passed through. Then the period of youth, in which occurs the development into the manhood and womanhood that the Creator provides for the maintenance and propagation of the species, must be most assiduously guarded, that this being may develop that vigor and capacity which is requisite for the multiplication of the human family. Then when the full development of the physical powers has been reached, the utmost vigilance is required in every hygienic particular, and as the summit is passed and the decline of the wonderful and mysterious mechanism which supports vitality is reached, different conservative rules for the prolongation of life must be added to those that have already been mentioned as necessary for the support of a vigorous body.

The scope of hygiene, therefore, is vastly wider than medication, which is necessarily tied down to the narrow limits of disease and the effects of man's disobedience of the various laws that hygiene lays down-rules which, if obeyed by all, would, in a few generations, obliterate medication, with its vast magazine of drugs and poisons, and consign medical science to the book moth and the antiquary. It is in this view of the subject that we offer a most energetic plea for more attention to a better hygiene, to a thorough personal hygiene and the adoption of a less heroic medication.

We have laid out the subject so that the different writers of the bureau have had opportunity to take up the different conditions in which hygienic rules are applicable to man personally, as an individual as well as in those wider relations which he sustains to his fellow men and to future generations. Is it not nobler to aim at the prevention of abnormal condition, to endeavor to reach the physical perfection of the race, to discourage disease and its necessary attendant, medicine, to even go on to that grander achievement, the eradication of these evils, and to place on our banners the motto, annihilation of diseases and the prevention of their return? Thus may we see hygiene assume its proper rank in the sciences, and thus will medication reach its minimum and mankind attain an approach towards that goal to which it should always aim-a higher and more perfect standard of earthly existence and usefulness.