Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/24

12 to the beggarly caddie and quean. And the whole stew was quite innocent of what we call drainage. Quite, Yet the waste-products of life, the lees and offscourings of humanity, all that housemaids call “slops,” had to be got rid of. Very simple problem this to our worthy Edinburgh forefathers, After dark the windows up in these “lands” were thrust open, and with a shrill cry of “Gardy-loo” (Gardez l'eau) the cascade of swipes and worse fell into the street below with a splash and an od—. “Ha! ha!” laughed Dr. Johnson to little Boswell ; “I can smell you there in the dark !”

The hygienic reformation of Britain, although adumbrated by sundry laws made at intervals from the fifteenth century onwards, was not seriously taken in hand until as late as the sixties of last century, and Disraeli’s famous Act defining a bad smell as a “nuisance” became law in 1875.

But although we may justly congratulate ourselves upon the hygienic achievements of England, one result of which has been the minimising of unpleasant odours, nevertheless, as a wider consideration of the facts will show us, the task of cleansing the air of England is not yet entirely completed. It is doubtless true that what we may term domestic stenches have for the most part been dispelled, but as regards public fœtors there are