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thereby, and no danger results. The parts of the body which
require regular and systematic washing are
(a) the parts exposed to defilement from without—as the
face and hands, the head, the feet and ankles, fouled
by the sputum, filth, and excreta of the street ;
(b) the parts defiled by exudations, or discharges from
within, as the sweating of the axilla, the groin, and
the feet, the discharge from the orifices—as the
nipples, uretha, vagina, anus, nostrils. " What
cometh out of a man defileth him."
There is also the moral aspect of the daily bath, and
of cleanliness generally. The French say that "to be well
dressed gives one more confidence than a good conscience."
If that be so, there is justification for saying something even
stronger about being clean.
As a nation we have up to the present overlooked the
necessity for personal cleanliness. Neither the Government
nor the local authorities have taken the least interest in the
matter as far as the home is concerned, and no means of washing the human body is considered to be an essential part of a
dwelling house. The landlord is not required to provide either
a bowl or a bath, and if the tenant wishes to wash himself it is
his own affair entirely.
The common bath has been put into many houses, but its
use has been limited in very many cases to the week-end hot
bathe, and as the bath is no use for any other kind of daily
domestic washing, it has been put to other uses, such as storing
coal, dirty clothes, or odds and ends of various sorts. The
supreme question, to-day and always, in sanitation is to produce
clean bodies. If defiling things come out of men, let us see to
it that they shall have no chance of getting to others. If we
can slaughter cattle wholesale to prevent disease getting to
others, then there is a much stronger case in favour of at least
washing human beings to prevent disease spreading from them
or to them.
D2