Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 23.djvu/676

658  to their probosces—a further protection from these, as well as from the bites of creeping insects, especially during epidemics and endemics in jails, ships, etc., by a daily inunction of the whole body with some terebinthinate, camphorated, or eucalyptalized ointment or liniment.

2. Domiciliary protection, exteriorly, by screens of trees, walls, fences, etc., interposed at some distance between dwellings and the sources of malaria or mosquito nurseries, together with fires, lamps, or electric lights, to act as traps for the attraction and destruction of such winged insects as may approach nearer; a further protection in the interior of dwellings being secured by the use of smoke (such as that of tobacco or pyrethrum), or of some volatile aromatic oil, as of camphor, etc., which may be offensive to proboscidian intruders.

3. Municipal protection, by the destruction or draining of swamps and pools which produce mosquitoes; and by the planting of forests to obstruct the latter in their flight, or cordons of electric lights for the same purpose, as well as for the destruction of insects that may be attracted by the flame or incandescence.



T is a little difficult in a necessarily restricted lecture to convey any exact idea of the way in which modern hygiene became formulated into so much of a science as it can at present lay claim to; but I will attempt to make a brief sketch of its more salient points. In the eighteenth century there were several important questions inquired into, and to a large extent solved, of which the chief were—1. The influence of air as a factor in the spread of disease; 2. The true cause and prevention of scurvy; and, 3. The prophylaxis of small-pox. Taking the last first, we may say that the introduction of inoculation was a most important step, even although we must admit that it introduced a greater danger to the community at large than could be compensated for by the protection to individuals. But it was the first step on the road which led at the close of the century to vaccination, one of the most signal triumphs of preventive medicine, and in our own time to the magnificent results obtained by the renowned Pasteur, results which seem pregnant with so much hope for the future of our race.

The inquiry into the causes of scurvy was another step in advance, of the most signal importance. No one in the present day can form 