Note 57 — CHAP. I. AIR.

This circumstance, in the character of the English, is only of modern date; for we learn from Erasmus, who was in England about two hundred and fifty years ago, that they were then extremely slovenly. The following passage is extracted from a letter he wrote to a physician in York, after his return to Holland:—“Conclavia solâ fere strata sunt argillâ, tum scirpis palustribus, qui subinde sic renovantur ut fundamentum maneat aliquoties annos viginti sub se fovens sputa, vomitus, mictum canum et hominum, projectam cerevisiam et piscium reliquias, aliasque sordes non nominandas.” He adds, that the windows were very ill calculated for ventilation, and imputes to the closeness and filthiness of the houses the frequent and long continued plagues with which England was infested, and particularly the sweating sickness, which, he says, seemed peculiar to this country. He mentions that his own country had been freed from the pestilence by certain changes that the State had made in the houses, in consequence of the advice of some learned man. Erasm. Lib. xxii. Epistol. 13.—It is probable that the greater number of those epidemics, called plagues, were only bad infectious fevers. What would contribute still more to the production of infection was the want of linen, which was hardly in use in those days. The disappearance, or at least the great diminution of such complaints in modern times, particularly in London, has been ascribed to the great increase in the proportion of vegetable food; but it is certainly more owing to the improvement in personal cleanliness, and to the greater spaciousness and neatness of houses. As a farther proof of this, it may be mentioned that in the charity, called the Charterhouse, in London, founded by Henry the Eighth, for the maintenance and education of poor boys, their sustenance is all animal food, as it was at the original institution, yet they are extremely healthy. The same observation applies to Winchester school, which was founded some ages before that.

There are some passages in ancient history in confirmation of the same opinion. Herodotus relates, that the ancient Egyptians were the most healthy of all the nations, except the Libyans, and he imputes this to the invariableness of their weather, and the serenity of their sky. But he mentions in another part of his works, that they were also the most cleanly of all people, not only in their household utensils, but in their persons, and that their clothing was chiefly of linen, which it was one of the principal studies of their life to wash and keep clean—ἑιματα δε λινεα φορεουσι ἀιει νεοπλυτα ὲπιτηδευοντες τουτο μαλισα. Herodot. Euterp. 37.—It is remarkable that he makes no mention of the plague, though he gives a very minute account of the country from his own observation, from whence it may be naturally inferred, that it did not then exist there, though Egypt is now so subject to it, that the plague is supposed by many to be an endemial disease in it. It would appear also from another passage in this historian, that he uses the word λοιμος, which we translate plague in a loose sense to signify any violent acute distemper; for he relates that a great part of the army of Xerxes, in their retreat from Greece, perished by the plague λοιμου and dysentery, in consequence of famine. Herod. Lib. viii. cap. 115.