Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 8.djvu/656

 636 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

flooded with water for the same reason that the broad, wind- swept avenues of our large cities are cleaned three times as often as the narrow, sweltering, disease-breeding streets and alleys. Had we any way to give a silk dress to every workwoman, together with time to display it, we might be sure that the coun- cilmen would demand the immediate renovation and constant sprinkling and sweeping of the narrow streets and alleys and asphalt everywhere.

The third period is that of commercial sanitation. This should have followed directly upon the second, but historically there was a period of two centuries "when Teutonic Europe was sleeping off its great debauch," when civilization was without the fundamental motives to sanitary improvement. The bar- barian glutton found more primitive means of comparing his success with that of his neighbors than the promenade, and obtained greater satisfaction from wine and the sword than from oriental finery and clean garments. The ideals of Chris- tian and pagan became direct obstacles to sanitary advance- ment. In fact, Holy Hieronymus, the monastic corporation, and the feudal lord combined to undo the sanitary progress of centuries of slow adaptation. The ascetic violated all the laws of personal hygiene, the monastery's ideal was inconsistent with public hygiene, and both glorified God by teaching submission to the pestilence. The feudal lord, on his part, thought first of the exigencies of defense, and constructed his castle with a view to herding together hosts of fighting warriors.

Europe made most bitter atonement for this disregard for the laws of health. Ravaging epidemics in the years 550, 1000, I 345-5 1 4&5> 1528, 1665, A. D., carried away millions, the Black Death alone, 1345-50, having cost China 13,000,000 lives, London 100,000, Venice a like number, Paris 50,000, and the Franciscan Friars of Germany 125,000. Lamprecht says these epidemics "were largely due to filth, but the superstition of the people attributed them to other causes." The reposi- tories of the world's knowledge prevented Christian Europe from learning the lessons which blind followers of instinct, untutored and wild, would have learned from these disasters,