Filthiest Place In the World

1901

Port-au-Prince, the capital, is by consent of all who have had opportunity of comparing it with other cities — the filthiest place in the world. The town was laid out by the French, and the streets are wide. It is only their great width that makes them passable, for the roadway before his dwelling is every householder's rubbish shoot, and slab sided pigs and starveling dogs perform all the sanitary offices for the town of Port-au-Prince save in the rainy season, when a heavier storm than usual comes to flush the open drains. In consequence the populace live in an atmosphere of combined cesspool and ash pit, which by all the laws of hygiene should produce chronic plague.

The free and independent negro leads the life that most nearly approaches his ideal. They have a proverb in the country that "only white men, black women and asses work," and there is truth in it. The black man lies around all day sleeping in the sun. His utmost effort is to play dice or watch a cockfight, but sleep is his favorite occupation, and he can do that better than anything else. In the country districts the old plantations have long since slipped back into the luxuriant overgrowth of the forest. In town any trading done is by the women and by foreigners. Undisturbed by the white man, to whom he is insolent, the town bred negro is pacific enough. The only exertion demanded of him is to avoid the attentions of the police. — Chambers' Journal.

Concerning Beds, Mattresses in Days of Old

1874

During all ages, from the earliest times, men have displayed their invention in designing beds which should gratify their natural love for comfort, for elegance, and for luxury. In the prehistoric times the dwellers in the caves most probably followed the suggestion given them by the animals which they drove out from their rocky dens, in this early stage of the "struggle for existence," and made their beds of leaves. From this condition to providing skins for the coverings of their couches, was a great advance, and with their increasing ability to dominate their surrounding conditions, and provide the materials for gratifying their natural as well as artificial wants, this step was but the first in a long course of invention and improvement applied to beds.

Among the Romans and the Greeks, as well as the other nations of antiquity, such an appliance as a mattress was unknown. They made their beds upon couches of wood, which were covered with skins, furs, woolen and other stuffs. Their luxury in beds consisted only in using more expensive coverings, replacing a sheep's skin by a tiger's or substituting for a rough woolen blanket one of finer texture, or a shawl of silk embroidered in gold and silver thread. These improvements, or those consisting in replacing the wooden bench which formed their support with one of bronze, or even of gold or silver, was really only a display of greater wealth, but could not be considered in these days an advance towards securing the advantages of a comfortable, luxurious, and healthy bed.

In the early period of modern history, beds were almost universally, in Europe, nothing but bundles of straw. As late in England as the times of Queen Elizabeth, when no carpets were used, and the floor was strewn with rushes, the beds were hardly anything better, and a wooden bench, or any rude framework which lifted the bed above the floor, was a luxury. Erasmus, in his letters, describes the social condition of the people during the reign of Henry VIII, and was disgusted at the state of the floors. The rushes, he says, were so seldom changed, and became so damp, that the feet were constantly kept wet, and thence colds and consumption were quite common.

In the dining-rooms, he speaks of the filth collected on the floor among the rushes; the bits of meat and bones thrown to the dogs, who fought around the guests' legs for them; the beer and wine emptied upon the floor; the slices of bread, used as plates for eating their meat on, and then thrown aside, altogether giving us no very high conception of the neatness and fine breeding of the time.

From Delaroche's fine picture of "The Death of Queen Elizabeth," an accurate idea can be gained of the beds of royalty at this period, and consequently those of the common people can be imagined. By a careful study of the times, and from all the contemporary evidence bearing upon this point, Delaroche was enabled to reproduce the scene with a truthful accuracy of detail. The queen is reposing upon a bed formed by spreading cloths upon the floor. She is covered with richly embroidered spreads of velvet, bordered with golden fringe. The moment chosen is when she is upbraiding the Countess of Nottingham for keeping back the ring Essex had sent to his royal mistress just before his execution. The queen herself is gorgeously attired, as was her constant custom, but the comparison between the brilliant coverings of the bed and its position, one which now would be considered as in the dirt, affords an admirable picture of the partial civilization of the times, with its splendor of display and its want of the simplest decencies of the present.

Mattresses were first made of straw or wool, then moss came to be used, and feathers, and finally curled hair. The trouble with all mattresses of these materials is, that they become by use matted and hard, and have to be remade. Besides, too, all of these materials have a greater or a less tendency to retain the bodily exhalations, and in all public places, such as hotels, hospitals, and other institutions where the beds are used in turn by a number of different persons, the danger of contagion, and the difficulty in any case of keeping the beds hygienically clean and pure, according to the demands of the present medical standard, is very great, if not impossible.

Those Ravenous Eskimos

1916

They Eat and Digest Food That Would Kill an Ordinary Man

We bear much of American dyspepsia, but there is one native race of America that is certainly not troubled in this respect. The Eskimo defies all the laws of hygiene and thrives. He eats until he is satisfied, but is said never to be satisfied while a shred of his feast remains unconsumed. His capacity is limited by the supply and by that only.

The Eskimo cannot make any mistake about the manner of cooking his food, since, as a rule, he does not cook it. Nor, so far as the blubber or fat of the arctic annual is concerned, is the Eskimo concerned about his manner of eating it. Indeed, he may be said not to eat it at all. He cuts it into long strips an inch wide and an inch thick and then lowers the strip down his throat as one might lower a rope into a well.

Despite all this the Eskimo does not suffer from indigestion. He can make a good meal off the flesh and skin of the walrus, provision so hard and gritty that in cutting up the animal the knife must be continually sharpened. The teeth of a little Eskimo child will, it is said by those in a position to know, meet in a bit of walrus skin as the teeth of an American child would meet in the flesh of an apple, although the hide of the walrus is from a half an inch to an inch in thickness and bears considerable resemblance to the hide of an elephant. The Eskimo child will bite it and digest it and never know what dyspepsia means. — Harper's Weekly.

—Stevens Point Daily Journal, Stevens Point, Wisconsin, July 29, 1916, page 3.

Comment: I don't know, do you suppose this article is true? The part about lowering the meat down their throat like lowering a rope down a well. After all, if the children have such good biting abilities, they're obviously adept at using their teeth. So why would the adults simply partake of big strips of meat by lowering it down their throats?

No More Wash Tub Baths for Kids, Showers at School

Hurley, Indiana, 1919--

NO WASH TUB BATHS FOR HURLEY KIDS

SHOWERS IN SCHOOL BASEMENT BECOME SO POPULAR CHILDREN PREFER THEM

Instead of being bathed before they come to school, the children attending the Hurley schools are bathed before they go home.

Last February a bathing plant was installed in the school. Last week it was re-opened for the winter months of the current season. The plant in the basement of the Lincoln school includes four showers for boys and five for girls.

Is Compulsory.

Roughly the course in bathing is compulsory, but some of the children whose parents object, may elect not to participate. Each woman teacher is responsible for the bathing of the girls. She takes them to the bathing plant in their turn and supervises the operation and preserves order during the process. She also sends the boys to the plant, but William Ostrander, manual training director, has charge. When the plan was first embarked upon, many persons doubted the wisdom of the policy. Suggesting parents might object if the school assumed the responsibility of bathing their children. In fact such was the case for a short time, until the children themselves took command. They told their parents quite flatly that they preferred standing under a warm shower to squatting in the family tub. Now the school bathing plant is so popular that very few children prefer the home bath to it.

Solves Problem

A bathing plant was the solution of a problem confronting teachers in every part of the country. The question is one of having all children physically clean and consequently healthy and active. In order to correct the condition the plant was opened with a wide enough program to kill the idea that it was exclusively for those who needed ministration from outside the home.

The school furnishes soap and towels. The towels, as may be expected, are carefully laundered and individual, soap is liquid. On their bath day, the children take with them, to school, a change of underwear and stockings to be put on when the bath is over.

--Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, November 20, 1919, page 7.


SAYS HUBBY WAS TIGHT

Chicago. -- According to Mrs. Mary Sebastian, 2030 Churchill street, her husband, Jacob, 4929 North Western avenue, cigar maker, is a penurious man. She explained in detail to Judge Sheridan E. Fry of the Court of Domestic Relations the manner in which she was forced to account to her husband for every cent she spent. Judge Fry ordered Sebastian to pay $9 a week for his child's support. Sebastian, although able to speak, is deaf, but could understand his wife's testimony through lip reading.

"My husband was holding three positions at one time," said Mrs. Sebastian, "and would give me only $20 each week to run our home. Each day he would ask for a detailed account of the money I used, and if I were unable to explain where 1 or 2 cents had been used, he would 'call me' for being extravagant."

--Ironwood Daily Globe, Ironwood, Michigan, November 20, 1919, page 7.