Hygiene

Bath of Aphrodite, Cyprus, with
Eucalyptus camadulensis.

Oh! who can ever be tired of Bath?
— Jane Austen (1775 – 1817), Northanger Abbey, chapter 10.

If any person whatever is detected in throwing any filth into the stream of fresh water, cleaning fish, erecting pigsties near it or taking water out of the Tanks, on conviction before a magistrate their house will be taken down and forfeit £5 for each offence to the Orphan Fund.
— The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 18th December 1803, quoted in F. J. J. Henry, The Water Supply and Sewerage of Sydney, 1939.

Of every clean beast thou shalt take to thee by sevens, the male and his female: and of beasts that are not clean by two, the male and his female. Of fowls also of the air by sevens, the male and his female; to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth.
— Holy Bible, Genesis, 7:2-3.

Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,
And dream of London, small and white and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.
— William Morris (1834 – 1896), The Earthly Paradise (prologue, ‘The Wanderers’).

O what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge is withered from the lake
And no bird sings.
— John Keats, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, 1819.

With much pain we have lately observed individuals washing themselves in this stream of water, particularly in that spot which runs centrally from King Street because that spot is almost secluded from every eye, that of curiosity excepted.
— The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 1820, quoted in F. J. J. Henry, The Water Supply and Sewerage of Sydney, 1939.

Wash the woodwork of the (cow)sheds everywhere with boiling water, containing in each gallon a wineglassful of carbolic acid. Then limewash the walls and roofs of the shed with good, freshly-burnt lime, adding to each pailful of whitewash one pint of carbolic acid. Cleanse the floors thoroughly with hot water, and then sprinkle freely with undiluted carbolic acid. Lastly, close all the doors and openings, and burn sulphur in the shed, taking care that neither men nor animals remain in the shed while the burning is going on.
— Angus Smith and William Crookes, Recommendations for Disinfection, 1866.

Watching television, you’d think we lived at bay, in total jeopardy, surrounded on all sides by human-seeking germs, shielded against infection and death only by a chemical technology that enables us to keep killing them off.
— Lewis Thomas, (1913 – 1993), ‘Germs’ in The Lives of a Cell, Penguin, 1973.

And many a Jakke of Dovere hastow soold,
That hath been twies hoot and twies coold.

Translation:
And many a Jack of Dover hast thou sold,
That had been twice hot and twice cold.

The Jack of Dover was almost certainly a pie of some sort.

— Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1345 – 1400), Canterbury Tales, ‘The Cook’s Prologue and Tale’.

Gather ye soap-suds while ye may,
The smuts are still a-flying:
And this same hair so bright today
Tomorrow may need dyeing.

The glorious Lamp of Oil, the wick,
The higher he’s a-getting
The sooner will the smuts fly quick
And on your hair be setting.

That hair is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer
But being spoilt, the worse, and worst
Hairs will succeed the former.

Then be not mean, good soap go buy;
And with it be not chary:
For having lost its bloom, you’ll sigh,
‘My hair for ever tarry.’
— Archibald Stoddart-Walker, Gather ye Soap Suds — Counsel to Girls.

Within a few years isotopes will turn up in many more expected or unexpected places — perhaps the slogan ‘Gamma Washes Whiter’, will become quite familiar to us when our ultra-sonic washing machines are equipped with some gamma source to sterilize shirts and socks and napkins.
— Egon Larsen, Atomic Energy, Pan Books, 1958, 136-7.

A filter consists of a bed of sand which is usually about 30 in. thick. The action of the sand in removing bacteria, finely divided clay, and colloidal matter smaller than the openings between the sand grains is explained in several ways.
— Ernest W. Steel, Water Supply and Sewerage, McGraw-Hill, 1947.

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