There is not one among these departments of hygiene in which nothing is left to be done; in most of them the work has scarcely begun. There has always been a desire for and an aiming at health; but ideas about it have changed completely. The former supports of hygiene have crumbled away in the powerful analytical solvents of modern physiology; very little has remained; everywhere new foundations are necessary. This requires workmen; the season appears favorable—do not let it pass unemployed.
It is not sufficient to build up correctly a series of hygienic truths, which might be the work of a few; these truths must be brought to bear upon life, and this requires instruments. Three professions are in real life the natural trustees and representatives of the hygienic interests of the community—physicians, architects, and engineers, and also the public administration. There must be harmonious action between them; good intentions are not sufficient; there must be knowledge and power. Only good musicians can make good music, and they must be well taught and practised. The institutions at which the members of these professions have received their education have all the while generally ignored hygiene as an independent branch of study. A vague supposition left it to the individuals concerned to take the trouble of gathering for themselves whatever was known or would be made public about matters of hygiene. Lectures on forensic medicine were supposed to be sufficient, but they have to consider facts and evidence only with regard to penal laws, which themselves result from the old and highly-cultivated science of jurisprudence. Hygienic laws must spring from hygienic science, and there was none.
Many of the existing hygienic laws and regulations cannot be kept up if examined by the light of hygienic science as it is now. It is no good going on issuing public regulations, demonstrative of good intentions, for the public health; the right thing is to create a firm basis for practical purposes and public measures. Hygiene must become an independent branch of study, to be taught by special teachers at universities, medical and polytechnic schools, not without the help of proper laboratories. Systematic instruction must be offered to students and practitioners of medicine, to members of the civil or municipal service, to architects and engineers. Books and reading can as little occupy the place of personal teaching and experimental investigation as a medical book in the library that of the physician, or a hand-book that of the public chair. The self-taught hygienist has frequently to look out for principles on which to act, while he is called upon to act at once, and routine alone is a dangerous and unreliable assistant. There are exceptions—brilliant ones even—but exceptions prove the rule.
The increasing interest taken by the intelligent and well-meaning members of society in matters of public health, which have also an
