Sanitary science, hygiene, or preventive medicine may claim to be one
of the brightest spots in the history of the nineteenth century. Public
hygiene was cultivated among the Egyptians, and in the Mosaic law it
reached a remarkable organization. The personal hygiene of the Greeks
was embraced in the saying, “The fair mind in the fair body,” and the
value of exercise and training was fully recognized. The Romans, too,
in public and private hygiene, were our superiors in the matter of
water supply and baths. But modern sanitary science has a much wider
scope and is concerned with the causes of disease quite as much as with
the conditions under which these diseases prevail. The foundations of
the science were laid in the last century with Jenner’s discovery of
vaccination. Howard, too, had grasped the association of fever with
overcrowding in the jails, while the possibility of the prevention of
scurvy had been shown by Captain Cook and by Sir Gilbert Blaine.
Preventive medicine was a blundering, incomplete science until
bacteriology opened unheard-of possibilities for the prevention of
disease. Before discussing some of the victories of preventive medicine
it will be well to take a brief survey of the growth of the following
subject: