Public Health: A Popular Introduction to Sanitary Science, Being a History of the Prevalent and Fatal Diseases of the English Population from the Earliest Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century

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Renshaw, 1870 - 216 pages
 

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Page 201 - Every year thousands undergo this operation; and the French ambassador says, pleasantly, that they take the small-pox here by way of diversion, as they take the waters in other countries. There is no example of...
Page 189 - The distress of prisoners, of which there are few who have not some imperfect idea, came more immediately under my notice when I was Sheriff of the County of Bedford ; and the circumstance which excited me to activity in their behalf, was the seeing some, who, by the verdict of juries, were declared not guilty — some on whom the grand jury did not find such an appearance of guilt as subjected them to...
Page 166 - The most pernicious infection, next the plague, is the smell of the jail, when prisoners have been long, and close, and nastily kept; whereof we have had in our time experience twice or thrice ; when both the judges that sat upon the jail, and numbers of those that attended the business or were present, sickened upon it, and died.
Page 72 - Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin, And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well.
Page 53 - The priests were to examine the diseased, and point out to special commissioners the persons infected, under punishment of the confiscation of their goods and of being burned alive. Whoever imported the plague, the state condemned his goods to confiscation. Finally, none except those who were appointed for that purpose were to attend plague-patients, under penalty of death and confiscation.
Page 179 - The county allows no straw; the prisoners have none but at my cost." The evils mentioned hitherto affect the health and life of prisoners. I have now to complain of what is pernicious to their morals; and that is, the confining all sorts of prisoners together: debtors and felons, men and women, the young beginner and the old offender...
Page 53 - John, in milder terms than his predecessor, ordered that no stranger should be admitted from infected places, and that the city gates should be strictly guarded. Infected houses were to be ventilated for at least eight or ten days, and purified from noxious vapours by fires, and by fumigations with balsamic and aromatic substances. Straw, rags, and the like, were to be burned; and the bedsteads which had been used, set out for four days in the rain or the sunshine, so that, by means of the one or...
Page 195 - The small-pox spread its destructive and desolating power, as the fire consumes the dry grass of the field. The fatal infection spread around with a baneful rapidity, which no flight could escape, and with a fatal effect that nothing could resist. It destroyed with its pestilential breath whole families and tribes...
Page 196 - ... from the influence of some evil spirit, who was preparing to extirpate their race; and to incite them to baffle death, with all its horrors, by their own poniards. At the same time, if their hearts failed them in this necessary act, he was himself ready to perform the deed of mercy with his own hand, as the last act of his affection, and instantly to follow them to the common place of rest and refuge from human evil.
Page 91 - Of the female sex most died, and hardly any children escaped ; and it was not uncommon to see an inheritance pass successively to three or four heirs in as many days. The number of sextons were not sufficient to bury the dead ; the bells seemed hoarse with continual tolling, until at last they quite ceased.

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