“Fetch our precepts from the Cynick tub,”
“Fetch our precepts from the Cynick tub,”
“Fetch our precepts from the Cynick tub,”
without fear of being accused of
“Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence.”
“Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence.”
“Praising the lean and sallow Abstinence.”
The external application of our “Water-Cure” sends us plump over head and ears into as many fathoms as you please. In the middle of the multitudinous sea, or under the even-down deluge of a shower-bath, we are equally at home and at ease. No misgivings of any kind restrict our exhortation to wash and to bathe. Medical advice is so precious a thing that we are anxious to enhance its value by its rarity. Nothing will effect this purpose so certainly as the habitude of constant and sensitive cleanliness among rich and poor, young and old. What ought to be the cheapest, and what is the most thorough instrument of cleanliness, is an abundance, an overflowing superabundance, of water. Before judging our neighbours, we may begin by looking into matters at home. Is it possible that the metropolis of Scotland, at any season of any year, shall be in such a condition from want of water as to exclaim in its agony,
“Oh, my offence is rank!—it smells to heaven?”
“Oh, my offence is rank!—it smells to heaven?”
“Oh, my offence is rank!—it smells to heaven?”
Is it possible that during certain summer months, in more than one year, of which the recollection does not dry up so readily as the city-reservoir, water could with difficulty be procured here for love or money? And is this the place, where the ordinary supply fails sometimes to meet the ordinary demand, in which it was gravely and enthusiastically proposed to erect spacious baths for the working classes? It is infinitely discreditable that such occurrences should have ever distressed us; but, looking forward both to what the people themselves are attempting, and to what the government intends to do, the necessity is apparent for an immense and immediate alteration and improvement in the supply of water to all large and densely-populated towns. The squabbles of companies cannot be permitted to banish health and breed fever. Extensive sanatory measures introduced into a city of which the water-pipes might be dry during the dog-days, would be a repetition of the monkey’s exhibition of the beauties of the magic-lantern, forgetting to light the lamp. The husky voice of the public, adust with thirst, shall not be wholly inaudible. The procrastinations of juntos cannot much longer be accumulated with the vicissitudes of the atmosphere.
When the scheme for the erection of baths for the working classes was first promulgated here, we individually subscribed our pittance, and predicted its failure—and for this reason: The plan could not stand by itself. To make a labourer, at the end of theday’s or the week’s work, as clean and fresh as soap and hot-water, with all appliances and means to boot, could make him, and send him to encounter in his own dwelling and vicinity the filth and the odours of a pig-stye, was not a very feasible proposition. But personal purification would induce household tidiness. It might do so, if ventilation and drainage and space were all at his command, and within his regulation. If they were not, in what a hopeless contest he engaged! Invisible demons, on whose invulnerable crests all his blows fell harmlessly, whose subtlety no precaution on his part could exclude, and to whose potency his own lustrations only made his senses more acute, would speedily quench his new-born ardour, and probably seduce him back to the persuasion, that for one in his position the truth lay in the proverb—“The clartier the cosier.” We must also give him the benefit of those data which political economists never refuse to any body—a prolific wife and numerous progeny. A clean house of one room, open to the incursions and excursions of seven or eight children, whose playground is the Cowgate, or, let it be the shores—that is, the common sewers—of the Water of Leith, is a tolerably desperate speculation. Thither, however, our operative, radiant from his abstersion, is doomed to repair, that he may be affronted by the muddy embraces of his infants, and oppressed by the fragrance of his home. The project of the baths, simply as such, although excellent in its spirit, and true in its tendency, could not, we repeat our belief, have been productive, as an isolated effort, of material or ending benefit. Much must go hand in hand, and step by step, with it. Ventilation and drainage, and more ample elbow-room, are indispensible to carry us forward successfully in the momentous progress on which we are, earnestly, we hope, entering towards the amelioration of the people. Nor shall we hesitate to affirm, that no system of education can be satisfactory or complete, which shall not at least endeavour to provide some means for extricating the offspring of the lower classes in their tender years, when the superintendence of father or mother is almost an impossibility for a great portion of the day, out of the causeway and the dunghill, and if not absolutely to put them in the way of good, at all events effectually to keep them out of the way of harm.
Then it is that we shall clamour for water with indomitable pertinacity. We shall demand it every where—in private houses, in public baths, and in fountains in our streets and squares. There can be no excuse for withholding it. Nature has not been niggardly in her distribution among the neighbouring hills of this simple and invaluable gift. When sums of money which stagger the most gaping credulity are revealed so near our thresholds, and demonstrated to be so readily available for useful purposes, it is neither presumptuous nor irrational to expect that a few driblets from the still swelling hoard may be dedicated to operations which, in combination with other extraordinary conceptions and performances, may crown the present century as more wonderful than any age, or all the ages, which it has succeeded. Great Britain, within a little span of time, has launched into an ocean of hazardous experiments. The voyage is more perilous, we think, than many anticipate; but if it be otherwise, and our forebodings are dissipated by steady sunshine and fine weather; if a new commercial policy shall furnish more sustenance than we require, without any detriment to native industry; if a grand system of education is destined to fortify public intelligence, without weakening public virtue; and if the physical condition of all ranks shall be ultimately so comfortable as to enable them to enjoy their good dinners and their good books, let us hope to hear, with our own ears, the people with one acclaim cry out—“We are well-fed, well-educated,” and “Our hands are clean!”
Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul’s Work.