CHAPTER XVII.

PERSONAL CLEANLINESS.

At the close of my last chapter I referred to the ever-recurring problem of public baths. Annually its agitation is renewed in lectures and newspapers; public bathing is voted without disagreement the thing of things needful to render the laity--_i. e._, the labor population--physically pure. It is the long-felt want; but, like the longed-for walk of the annual Sunday-school parade, it is soon done and gone. Still, we must have patience with those dear souls, our ethical teachers of the press and platform, for taking such a deep, sentimental, though unscientific, interest in the welfare of the unclean. Owing to the non-existence of home facilities for cleanliness among the working class, the accumulations of soil and exudation during the long fall, winter, and spring months are so great that their bodies become too rank and malodorous for the nostrils of the refined. Consequently, as all animals seek the tepid water of the summer, and as man is no exception to a capacity for laving in the circumambient fluid, to three-fourths of the population of this metropolis it must be a glorious perennial treat to dip in the river, bay, or sea; and it must indeed be a dire necessity to those that have managed to survive contagious and other diseases during their long immurement. Without this summer cleansing few animals, bestial or human, would run half their average careers. It is accordingly not strange that during the summer a bath in open water is a daily hygienic necessity and source of joy to thousands of creatures.

Now, it is just because godliness appears in the wake of cleanliness that I made so strong a plea in my last chapter for ample bath-tubs and water-closets. For I do not approve, nay, I emphatically condemn, the system of public baths along the shores of our rivers and bay. Their waters are contaminated by numerous sewers, and bathers have contracted many contagious diseases that have become epidemic in neighborhoods. Note especially the annoying eye troubles that follow in the wake of such bathing. Of course, the sport and exercise involved in open-water bathing are highly commendable; but the danger of contracting contagious disease, and the outrage of the sense of refinement when contemplating fellow-creatures in the act of stirring up polluted waters, should call a halt to our encouragement of public bathing in and around our metropolitan water fronts. These waters are surely anything but a means of cleanliness.

The water-closet, however, is of far greater importance than the bath-tub, and especially than the public water-gymnasium--which last is so much lauded by some of our misguided philanthropists. Intestinal foulness, as a prolific source of disease, is of far more serious importance than surface foulness. However, both the bath-tub and the water-closet are indispensable to every suite of rooms.

Another need imperatively demanded by the exigencies of city life is the establishment of public water-closets at several thousand convenient centers throughout this great city. At present the male population, when away from their residences, are obliged to make use of a near-by saloon--a most uncertain resort, and one in which courtesy will generally constrain them to imbibe intoxicants _nolens volens_. The female population have not even the saloon as a resort, and can relieve themselves only when in the vicinity of department stores. American enterprise can improve in many respects on the several European models of public-relief stations. The public is becoming conscious of its needs and rights in this respect; and one of the sanitary evolutions of city life--congested as it is--will be ample and cleanly public accommodations for intestinal relief.

Americans in general suffer from dyspepsia, biliousness, constipation, uric acid, etc.--all of which disorders are symptoms of that world-wide disease, proctitis: inflammation of the anus, rectum, and often the colon. Nor is it any wonder that unwashed humanity suffers from proctitis and its consequences. The unwashed have no bath-tubs and practically no water-closets. This lack is due to the tax on water facilities, to expensive plumbing, and to too much “science” and not enough common sense among our city fathers. As a consequence of ignorance and inconvenience, most people defecate but once in twenty-four hours; and very many but once in two or three days or a week. The once-a-day stool is frequently scanty, and as a consequence the kidneys, lungs, and skin are called upon to perform the vicarious function of eliminating a portion of the daily excrement; and the colon and sigmoid flexure have to hold the stored contents unduly--until the feces be expelled by purgatives or by the irritation that the accumulated mass occasions. Could the members of the Board of Health and the people at large be brought to a realizing sense of the value of personal cleanliness,--internal as well as external,--bath-tubs and water-closets would abound in our homes.

Man’s habits as to eating, drinking, dressing, bathing, and especially as to defecating, are clues to his growth in refinement. But we must beware of judging a person by one or two good or bad habits; he should be estimated by the sum of his habits and their peculiar combination. Refined habits are not all of them acquired at once; they develop slowly, one after another, when opportunities are favorable, especially the habits as to bathing and defecating. Opportunities for these latter are wofully lacking at present--the cause and consequences of which lack are pointed out in the last chapter. A child will derive far more good from a ready access to bath-tub and water-closet than from a lifelong attendance at Sunday-school and church with the temple of the human soul permanently unclean. Only one that has learned to respect and care for the abode of the soul--the body--is worthy of being classed among the refined. It is truly deplorable that the great majority of the human race are creatures of the moment or the hour, tolerators of abnormal functioning, slow suicides of vital capacities. Claims of the permanent are constantly ignored; most of us are blind to the joy involved in the harmonious functioning of all the organs--a functioning that always ensues upon hygienic care.

Our organs will for a time bear neglect or unhygienic conditions without protesting their annoyance. Many persons never use hot water or soap; others find one bath, in river or sea, quite sufficient for the year; others, again, feel the need of a bath once or even twice a month, or even once a week. But there are very few of us that seem to require a bath daily. Many, alas! have grown accustomed to a bathless existence.

Have you ever stood near an Italian or Greek street vender, or have you ever been within five feet of a low-class Polish Jew? If so, the stench arising from his unwashed body must have nauseated you. It is no secret that such persons never wash--especially the latter, who live in rooms reeking with filth. Contemplating such conditions, I feel impelled to propose a great, nay, the greatest reform--one suggested years ago by Samuel Butler in _Erewhon_. Let us make Health the great civic virtue, and Disease, as well as unsanitary and unhygienic conditions, the crime. Our so-called crimes of theft, murder, forgery, etc., should be treated as weaknesses and faults to be corrected by Moral Rectifiers--by the preachers, priests, rabbis, and ethical culturists. Consider how much is implied in developing and breeding a race of healthy men and women. All relations of life would feel the vital change at once, and moral weaknesses would disappear. Any human cesspool entering a public conveyance, or in any way mingling with cleanly people, should be arrested, thoroughly cleansed, internally and externally, and sequestered for a time sufficient to teach him better. There is a local rule of the Board of Health against spitting, but it is rarely enforced. There are millions of public expectorations to one arrest. For the appearance in public of consumptives, and their offensive hawking, coughing, and spitting, no one seems to have suggested a remedy. All diseases should be classified as to grades of punishment; and all moral weaknesses, such as defalcations, adultery, burglary, should be treated at the various hospitals, which latter should be conducted solely by Moral Rectifiers.

In closing, I shall direct attention to a few other points in personal cleanliness--the mouth, ear, nose, and throat.

It is important on hygienic grounds that the mouth receive proper care two or three times daily.

The ear is commonly kept clean; still there are many instances of non-refinement of this organ, and from its non-hygienic treatment deafness often occurs.

The prevalent nasty, ill-bred habit of hawking and spitting in public, or in company, even by genteel persons, can be cured best by early training in correct habits. This habit, as well as the evidences of throat troubles, is usually to be ascribed to inattention to the nose. When catarrhal conditions are avoided or properly treated the throat will not be so affected as to necessitate this reprehensible practice. Trouble is invited for the tonsils and soft palate by our constant hawking; certainly the tender sensibility of the throat is destroyed thereby. Inasmuch as the tobacco habit is so general, and spitting is a necessary accompaniment of that habit, stringent laws against hawking and spitting would be unpopular among the masculine half of the race. But should public opinion ever become educated up to the point in which disease becomes a crime, opposition would cease. This consummation is devoutly to be wished, for then we will have adopted and followed Ingersoll’s injunction to “make health catching, not disease.”