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SANITARY SERIES 
No. I 
|he |jcalth ||aws of/Jtoses, 
By HELEN W. LUDLOW. 
“ Lord, have mercy upon us, and write all these thy laws in our 
hearts, we beseech thee.” Common Prayer. 
HAMPTON, VIRGINIA: 
Published from the Hampton Institute Press, 
1878. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878, by Helen W. 
Ludlow, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
Perhaps most people who read the Ten Command- 
ments, and know them by heart, have no idea of the 
fact that the children of Israel received from Moses at 
least ten other commandments as binding upon them and 
upon us, because as truly the laws of God in Nature, as 
those which were written upon the two tables of stone. 
Some people wonder why there were not more than ten 
commandments. Why was not slavery forbidden? Why 
was not intemperance forbidden? Perhaps it was in an- 
swer to questions like these that Paul wrote to the Ro- 
mans,* “And if there be any other commandment it is 
briefly comprehended in this saying” (of Mosesf) “Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But the rest of the 
laws of Moses, most people perhaps are accustomed to 
think of as mere “ceremonial laws,” types and sym- 
bols, oppressive to observe, and joyfully swept away 
when the gospel of Christ, which they somehow 
foreshadowed, appeared in its gladness. This is partly 
true, no doubt, but a more careful reading of the history 
of the Israelites’ wanderings under the guidance of their 
great general, Moses, reveals some remarkable facts con- 
cerning his administration. 
♦Romans xiii; 9. 
t Leviticus xix: 18. 6 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
It is certainly a curious thing, worthy the notice of ev- 
ery student of the progress of the human race, whether 
his standpoint be religious or purely scientific, that the 
moving camp in the wilderness was governed by as 
strict and perfect a sanitary code as any sanitary com- 
mission could now devise. The friends of social science 
are making great efforts to spread among the people a 
knowledge and appreciation of the laws of health, so lit- 
tle understood, so widely neglected, yet here we find 
that they are as old as Moses. 
We have a natural reverence for the voice of antiquity, 
the counsels of the fathers; sometimes an exaggerated 
reverence, for the world is really older now than it ever 
has been before, of course, and the wise men of old 
would have been far from desiring or imagining that 
their descendants would not improve upon their ideas in 
hundreds of years. But when we find a set of laws of 
living uttered three thousand years ago, which thirty 
centuries have only developed in operation, and which 
the latest modern science can only reiterate and rein- 
force, we must indeed feel that they are the embodied 
wisdom of ages, the wisdom of nature, the laws of God. 
As such, they demand the careful study of every intelli- 
gent person, rich or poor, of great or little education, 
and of every nationality—every one who desires length 
of days, and health of body, and the advancement of the 
race. 
The freedmen of the Southern States are very fond of 
comparing themselves to the children of Israel, and trac- 
ing the parallel, which is indeed striking in some re- 
spects, between their own captivity, “way down in 
Egypt’s land,” and happy Exodus, with the history of 
the chosen people of God. I ask them, therefore, to re- 
member that after passing through the Red Sea of deliv- 
erance, the children of Israel yet had forty years of wan- THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
7 
dering in the wilderness between them and the Promised 
Land, and to give especial heed to the laws which Mo- 
ses gave to guide that wandering, and which might 
have shortened it much if they had been obeyed. 
Sublime is the story of Sinai burning and thundering, 
the vast hosts waiting in the plain below, while Moses 
talked alone with the great Law-giver in the cloud on 
the mountain top, receiving from Him not only the ta- 
bles of stone, but minute directions for his daily guid- 
ance and care of the helpless hordes depending upon 
him, the health laws for their bodies as well as their 
souls. 
What were these Health Laws of Moses, and what are 
they to us ? 
The more we know of the science of living, and the 
conditions of health and disease, the more plainly we see 
the perfection of the sanitary regulations which govern- 
ed the great camp of the wandering Israelites. To be 
sure, they had a good start. David says, “There was not 
one feeble person among their tribes.” * That shows 
that, in spite of the oppression of the last Pharaoh under 
whom they served, they had been, on the whole, well 
cared for physically, and their simple out-door life and 
work as herdsmen had been good for them. But now 
that they had set out in the world for themselves, unac- 
customed to the use of liberty, and unlearned in all the 
learning of the Egyptians, the case was very different, 
and the only safety for them was in the strictest of sani- 
tary laws most strictly enforced. 
These are no less valuable now than then. Let us see 
what they were, and whether we are observing them. 
You will find them scattered through the books of Exo- 
dus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy. They were read of- 
ten in the hearing of the people. 
*Psalm cv: 37. 8 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
The first of the Health Laws of Moses was 
BE CLEAN. 
First in time, and first in importance; most comprehen- 
sive, and made the symbol, as it ever must be, of that 
purity of soul without which no man shall see the Lord. 
Why, even before the people were allowed to draw near 
to listen to the ten commandments, Moses was directed 
to tell them to purify themselves and wash their gar- 
ments. * Just as, long before, when Jacob wished to 
make a thank offering to God who had been with him in 
his wanderings and brought him to his father’s house in 
peace, he commanded all his household, “Be clean, 
and change your garments, and we will go up to Bethel, 
and make an altar unto God.”t 
Again and again is this law of Moses repeated, and 
modern science finds no more important health law than 
it is. How much it was made to include:—cleanness of 
of clothes, of personal habits, of houses, of the 
whole camp, of the^food]they ate, and the air they 
breathed. 
Look over that list and see how far you live up to it. 
BE CLEAN IN YOUR PERSON. 
I once knew a young lady who offered to prepare 
a confirmation dress for a little girl in the city of 
New York. Her mother was too poor to give her a 
new white muslin dress, such as the other children 
had, and the child very gladly went to be meas- 
ured for her new frock. But the lady was forced to 
stop and ask, “ Sallie, when did your mother give you a 
bath last ?” 
“She never gave me no bath, ma’am.” 
* Exodus xix: 10. t Gen. xxxv: 2, 3. 
J Exodus xxx: 18-21. Leviticus v: 2, 3. Lev. xvi: 28. Lev. xvii; 
15. Lev. xxii; 4-6. Numb, viii; 5-7, Numb, xix; 9-82. “ Well, when did you wash yourself all over ?” 
“Never did, ma’am,” and the lady could well be- 
lieve it. The poor mother said she thought it would 
make Sallie sick to wash her all over. She did not know 
that a clean, sweet body was a better dress for Sallie’s 
young soul on her confirmation day, than any white 
muslin and ribbons. 
The Israelites were better taught. They had abundant 
provisions for bathing, and were required to use them 
very frequently. For the priests and Levites especially, 
as soon as the tabernacle was made for the church in the 
wilderness, great “lavers” and “seas,” which were sim- 
ply bathing tanks, were set up, that they might purify 
themselves before worshiping the Lord, and thus be ex- 
amples to all the people. 
Then how much more should we, who stand in the 
light which all these centuries have been gradually pour- 
ing upon the subject of health, and the importance of 
cleanness, be careful to keep clean these bodies which 
are “the temples of God.” * 
Let us see what is known on this subject. 
If you should look at your skin through a powerful 
magnifying glass, you would see that it is filled with 
little holes, so very small that twenty-eight hundred of 
them exist in a space of a square inch, and therefore, 
a grown man of ordinary size has as many as seven 
million in the skin of his whole body. It is through 
these little holes, or pores as they are called, that the 
perspiration flows when you are heated. But not only 
when you are heated ; it is passing off constantly, 
though in such comparatively small quantities that it is 
scarcely felt. Yet even by this insensible, or unfelt 
perspiration, it is estimated that two pints of matter 
pass out of our bodies in twenty-four hours. 
the Health Laws ok MoseS. 
9 
* 1 Cor. iii: 16,17. vi: 19. 10 
What is this matter ? It is the dead waste of the body, 
no more fit to be kept in it than any other of its waste 
substances. Now if these little drain pipes, these safety 
valves of the body, be choked and stopped up with dirt, 
there will be no outlet of this waste; and what becomes 
of it ? It is forced back into the system, and is absorbed 
into the blood, and poisons all the organs of life. It must 
be coughed up from the lungs, or break out in unsightly 
blotches, or inflame and distress the digestive organs, or 
press upon the nerves and cause that most trying of 
pains, neuralgia, or rheumatism. 
If it is a young child that thus sutfers, his weak little 
frame is very likely to yield to the poison, and he dies. 
Sponge off his shriveled, feverish limbs with clean water 
and soap, and put him, in a warm clean gown, into a 
cleau bed, and see how quieted and comforted he will be. 
Thousands of dear little babies die every year from dirt. 
Is not this a sad and terrible fact ? 
BE CLEAN IN YODR GARMENTS.* 
This naturally follows cleanness of person. When 
you feel the luxury of a clean skin, you will shrink from- 
covering it with a dirty shirt. It is not the outward 
stain of work that matters so much. A mud spot on the 
coat is unsightly, but foul underclothing is unwholesome. 
When the waste of the body escapes through the pores 
of the skin, where does it go ? From those parts that are 
covered, it is, of course, taken up by the clothes. This 
is evident enough in the case of sensible perspiration. It 
is no less true of the insensible. No underclothing 
should be worn more than a week without a tho- 
rough washing, and that which is worn all day 
should never be worn at night. Why not ? Be- 
cause you don’t want to poison yourself. The little 
tie pores of the skin can take in as well as give 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
♦Lev. vi: 10, 11. Lev. xvi: 27, 28. Lev. xvii: 15. Numb, xix: 9, 10. 11 
out. The body throws off the waste matter because it 
wants to get rid of it, not to be confined in it still. 
There was a story among the old Greeks, that the 
strongest man in the world, Hercules, who had strangled 
serpents in his cradle, was slain at last by a poisoned 
shirt sent him by a treacherous friend. What the shirt 
of Nessus was to Hercules, dirty shirts are to many a 
strong man in our day. 
I knew ajady, threatened with lung disease, whose 
physician directed her to put on fresh under flannels ev- 
ery morning. This was accomplished very easily, with- 
out extra expense, by having the garment worn one day 
airing in the sun all the next, and twice or three times a 
week washed and thoroughly dried. She found, as the 
doctor had promised, that it made a wonderful difference 
in the ease of breathing. 
If you were to walk in the morning through the streets 
of one of the handsomest cities in Germany, you would 
be amused to see the rows of open windows with bed- 
clothes hanging out of them; bright blue, and yellow and 
red patch-work quilts and comfortables, blankets, sheets, 
fat pillows, and even feather beds and straw beds, push- 
ed half way out, airing and sunning all a long morning. 
You would laugh, but, after all, the sturdy, rosy-cheeked 
owners of the bed-clothes have most right to laugh, when 
they creep into those clean, wholesome beds at night, to 
sleep the sound sleep of health. 
Does it not sound inviting ? Wouldn’t you like such 
a bed ? Yet how many of you jump out of bed in the 
morning without even turning back the bed-clothes, and 
hurry to spread them up without shaking, as soon as you 
are dressed perhaps, thus, day after day, shutting in all 
the foul vapors that have passed off from the skin night 
after night. Often, a little delicate child is put into a 
bed like this, soaked with the poisonous waste not only 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 12 
of his own body, but of one or two grown persons’* 
This is a disagreeable subject to dwell upon, but not 
half so disgusting as the reality. Do you sleep on such 
a bed as this ? If you do, and if you think you would 
like to try the other plan, let me tell you what to do. 
Have a good “clarin’ up time,” as Aunt Dinah would 
say, to begin with. Wash your blankets and bed-quilts 
as w*ell as your sheets and pillow cases, and dry them 
thoroughly in the sun. Take your straw-bed to pieees, 
let the boys make a bonfire of the old straw; wash the 
ticking, and, when it is thoroughly aired and dry, fill it 
with clean, sweet straw. Feathers can be washed, and 
dried in a sunny room, and they will be as springy as 
ever, but I hope that you do not sleep on a feather bed. 
Straw is much more easily kept clean, not heating and 
weakening as feathers are. Take your bedstead to pieces, 
scrub it with cold soap suds, and air it in the sun. Then 
make up your bed, and your sleep will be sweet enough 
to pay for your labor. To-morrow morning, try the Ger- 
man plan of airing your beds and bedding, for you do 
not want to lose the good results of your work. Quilts 
and blankets should be washed twice a year, -which will 
be sufficient if they are aired daily, and if the sheets are 
washed, as they should be, once a week and daily aired. 
When you take your bedstead to pieces, I am afraid 
yon may find a great deal of dust and dirt, beneath and 
behind it. And this brings us to another regulation of 
Moses in regard to cleanness. 
BE CLEAN IN YOUR HOUSES.* 
He required all the tents and houses to be kept from 
defilement. Is your house clean? Under the beds, I mean, 
and in the corners, and behind the wardrobes, and on 
top of the cupboards, and in the closets. 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
Lev. xiv: 33-51. *Nuinb. xix: 14. 13 
A servant girl who thought she had “got religion” was 
asked why she thought so, and she replied, “Because now 
I sweep out the corners.” There seems, indeed, to be 
something in the honest purpose to live a good true 
life, which makes one hate uncleanness, as well that 
which is hidden as that which is seen—in the corners 
of the house and the corners of the heart. Moses said, 
“ Whatsoever uncleanness a man shall be defiled with- 
all, and it be hid from him, when he knoweth it, he 
shall be guilty.”* Ignoranee may excuse for a time, 
though it does not save from sickness or death, but 
when you know you are unclean, you have the re- 
sponsibility upon you, and are guilty unless you clean 
yourselves. 
Do you say, “But I am strong and well, though I 
am not so particular” ? My friend, look about you a 
little, and look a little deeper. Do you live in a city ? 
Look up the death rate. Where do the fevers, and 
choleras and diphtherias begin, and carry off most vic- 
tims ? In the broad, airy, clean streets, or the narrow, 
close, dirty ones; in the airy, well-kept houses of the 
educated classes, or the swarming, suffocating tene- 
ments ? Do you say, “Well, once I knew of fever 
breaking out up town when there wasn’t any in our 
ward” ? Did you see the reports of the Sanitaay Com- 
mission upon the state of a sewer pipe cut off in 
sinking a railroad, or a natural drainage choked by 
the ignorance of street surveyors and house builders ? 
Or did you, perhaps, drive one of the carts that helped 
fill up the sunken lots with garbage instead of clean 
earth, putting money into the pockets of street contract- 
ors and coffins into the cemeteries ? 
But do you say, still more bitterly, “ It is the curse 
of poverty then. The rich can afford to be healthy, 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
* Lev. v: 2, 3, 14 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
the poor man must die ” ? Try a little soap and water, 
and sunshine and air, before you come to that sad 
conclusion. There is no immunity for the rich, I can 
assure you, in their riches. A few years ago, the 
son of Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, heir 
to the throne of Great Britain and India, lay for 
weeks at the point of death in the palace of one of 
the first noblemen of England. Telegrams flashed back 
and forth under the seas, and all the civilized world 
sympathized with the widowed Queen mother and the 
anxious nation. And all because of a foul sewer pipe in 
the beautiful palace of an Earl. 
Are your homes and your neighbors’ homes as clean as 
you could make them, poor as you are ? If all that won’t 
suffice, then try a little law. If the house you live in is 
badly drained, and foul from any cause you cannot reach 
yourself, and your landlord refuses to remedy it, report 
to the Sanitary Commission, the Board of Health, and 
you will have the satisfaction of seeing the nuisance in- 
spected, and your landlord obliged to abate it. That is 
what the rich have done for you; devised for you this 
protection. And well they may, for their interests are 
bound up with yours in this matter. The pestilence that 
begins in the tenement house does not always end there, 
or until it ravages the whole city. But the trouble is 
not want of a remedy, half so much as want of knowl- 
edge and care to use it. 
Do you live in the country ? You are to be congrat- 
ulated then. You have more room to breathe in, fewer 
causes of decay and disease about you. But even here, 
you will need to remember the laws of Moses. You 
know well enough that fevers are not confined entirely 
to the city, but perhaps you do not fully know the caus- 
es of them. From the undrained marshes, the stagnant 
ponds, the reeking ditches, the dirty cellars, rises the ma- 15 
laria which produces all the forms of intermittent fever 
and chills, and malarious dysentery and diarrhoea. Ma- 
laria is only the Italian name for bad air, and it is a pity 
we had not kept the English word for it, that it may look 
as ugly as it is. It may be a new idea to some of you that 
air can be dirty as well as clothes or food, but dirty air 
is the most frequent of all the causes of disease. We 
breathe air constantly into our lungs. Its work there is 
to purify the blood, If it is itself impure, it poisons 
instead of cleanses. 
KEEP THE AIR CLEAN.* 
The Health Laws of Moses were very strict on 
this point. Everything that could taint the air 
must be immediately carried outside the camp, and 
burned or buried. Do you ask how the air can be 
thus poisoned ? Did you ever notice how, when a 
bright sunbeam falls across a room, you can see at once 
numberless specks of floating dust which you had not 
perceived before ? The light of science, falling upon 
the air too many of us breathe, shows us, through the mi- 
croscope, that it is loaded with more minute but still 
more numberless particles which, when collected and 
examined, are found to consist of vegetable and animal 
matter in a high state of decay. So deadly poisonous is 
this matter that a few drops containing it, injected into 
the jugular vein of a dog, has actually thrown him into 
a violent fever, corresponding in all the symptoms to 
yellow fever, including the black vomit. Taken into 
the lungs with the air, this poison enters the blood di- 
rectly, producing disease according to the quantity re- 
ceived and the nature of the poison. Where vegetable 
decay predominates, chills and fever, malarial dysen- 
tery, neuralgia and rheumatism are chiefly produced. 
THE HEALTH LAWS OP MOSES. 
♦Lev. iv: 11, 12. 21. Lev. viii: 17. Lev. ix: 11. 16 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
Typhus and scarlet fevers, and diphtheria are fostered 
by the poison of animal decay, such as arises from open 
cesspools, foul sinks and sewers, and the accumulated 
dirt of over-crowded tenement houses. If we breathe 
the purest air into our lungs, we do not breathe it out 
fit for breathing again. Part of it has entered the blood 
to purify it, and much of what is breathed out is a gas 
unfit to sustain life, and loaded with animal waste from 
the body. So, if the air of a living room is not constant- 
ly renewed by ventilation, it is very soon impure and poi- 
sonous. In the confined holds of slave ships, many poor 
wretches have perished miserably by suffocation. 
And where these poisons are diluted with purer air, 
and do not result in such violent disease and speedy 
death, they no less surely affect the health and slowly 
weaken the constitutution, bringing on, especially, dis- 
eases of the organs of breathing, epidemic influenza, ca- 
tarrh, and the slow but fatal consumption which is trans- 
mitted often to children and children’s children. The 
reason this most terrible disease prevails more at the 
North than at the South is not nearly so much because of 
the direct effect of the colder climate, as from the more 
indoor life of the people. All good physicians now 
send their patients where they can live out of doors. 
It may astonish you, but it is true'that scientific men 
compute that, of all the diseases which carry off such 
thousands of our population every year, as many as one- 
half are preventable diseases: that is, diseases wThich might 
be prevented by strict attention to the laws of health. 
What a thought is that ! I know that some of you be- 
lieve that sickness is a visitation of God; sent in judg- 
ment, as you say, and that it is almost blasphemous to 
talk of preventing it. Moses, evidently, did not think 
so. It is a law of God that effect shall follow cause. 
Solomon said, “ Can a man take fire into his bosom and TTtE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSkS. 
17 
his clothes not be burned ?” Would you call such burn- 
ing the judgment of God ? So it is—his judgment up- 
on the disregard of natural laws, and so is every case of 
preventable disease his judgment, in the same way. 
You say you cannot see this poison in the air. No ; 
if you could, what dark or blood-red clouds of wrath 
would be seen coiling about some of our houses, press- 
ing for entrance at every door and window. The poi- 
son is not preceptible to the unaided eye, but it usually 
is to the sense of smell. How does your close sleeping 
room smell to you after you have been out in the fresh 
air awhile ! No man, rich or poor, should take a house 
that has a bad odor about it which he cannot remove. 
Does that house rent cheaper that has an open cesspool 
in the back yard, a clogged up drain, a stagnant ditch, 
a slaughter house or sour swamp in the neighborhood ? 
You won’t find it cheaper when you come to count in 
doctors’ bills and sick days out of work, and, it may be, 
the loss of wife and child. God says to you, as Moses 
to the Israelites, Be clean. 
It is well to know that the malaria of swamps may 
be at least much diminished, by the planting of trees 
and shrubs which in their growth feed upon the gases so 
hurtful to the human body. The Eucalyptus, or Aus- 
tralian blue-gum, is known to possess this absorbent 
power in a remarkable degree, and it is now extensively 
planted in California, and the other Pacific states and 
territories, and in the South, for this and other good 
qualities. It is a good timber tree, and its leaves, and 
an oil prepared from them, give great relief as an out- 
ward application in rheumatism. In climates too cold 
for the blue-gum, which will not flourish in the Atlantic 
states much north of South Carolina, other trees may 
be planted with benefit. The common sunflower, rapid 
of growth, cheerful and homelike in the cottage door- 18 
yard, is one of the best natural absorbents of malaria, 
and will not shut out the sunshine from the house, as 
trees may if planted too close. Sunshine and pure air; 
these are Nature’s purifiers. Open your doors and win- 
dows to them. 
BE CLEAN IN YOUR FOOD.* 
This was another of the Health Laws of Moses. 
You would find it curious, and perhaps amusing, to 
read the long lists of clean and unclean animals 
allowed or forbidden as food to the Israelites. The 
selection would seem to you sometimes very strange, 
though generally perfectly accountable. But this is a 
law which would naturally vary in operation in different 
countries. The locust, for example, is still eaten in the 
East, and perhaps is not more repulsive than our shrimp 
is at first sight. We need not eat it because they did. 
The oyster, on the other hand, which we find so good, is 
neither pleasant nor wholesome in the warm southern 
seas. And the pig, which was forbidden to the Israelites, 
is, even in this country to some extent, though less than 
in theirs, infested with a little worm of microscopic size, 
the living germ of which, taken into the hnman body, de- 
velops in the muscles, and produces very painful and 
often fatal disease. This disease is quite common in 
Germany, where much raw or partly cooked pork is eaten; 
it is not unknown in this country, and has, no doubt, of- 
ten occurred unrecognized. You need not give up your 
pigs, but be careful to keep them from eating carrion 
and vermin—rats especially, which are themselves in- 
fested with the trichinae. To make yourselves perfectly 
safe, be sure always to cook your pork thoroughly— 
through and through—parboiling it before frying; thus 
killing the living germs, if any exist. But a whole book 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
* Lev. vii: 18,19, 31. Lev. xi: 2-23. Lev. xxii:8. Deut. xiv: 3-20. THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
19 
could be written about proper food, and we hope to give 
you other pamphlets upon this important subject. 
BE CLEAN IN YOUR PERSONAL HABITS; CLEAN IN LIFE 
AND MORALS.* 
This was one of the Health Laws of Moses, a 
most important one. 
There is in Rome a famous statue, a colossal group 
representing a father and his two sons in the coils of 
huge serpents. As I looked upon it, it seemed to me a 
terrible allegory of the power of evil habit. The strong 
man is stung to death, and though every muscle is strain- 
ed to resist the crushing folds, while he strives to stran- 
gle the monster and tear it from him, you see that the 
struggle is hopeless. The weaker, younger lad is also 
evidently doomed, but the elder, in the full strength of 
young manhood, and with fewer coils about him, may 
even yet escape. So do evil habits hold, and crush, and 
sting their victims. It is the first stealthy coil we 
must fear, or another and another glides around us, and 
then how terrible the struggle which is the price of life. 
Weakness and repulsive disease, transmitted from gene- 
ration to generation, are the terrible natural consequen- 
ces of breaking God’s law of cleanness of life. 
There are some diseases, you know, which can be com- 
municated from one person to another by personal con- 
tact; they are “catching,” we say. A very dreadful 
and contagious one prevailed among the Israelites, 
brought with them from Egypt, the terrible curse upon 
sin and uncleanness, the leprosy, happily unknown as 
yet among us. By the laws of Moses, all cases of this 
infectious disease were to be strictly secluded. The pa- 
tient was to be treated outside the §amp, and not to re- 
turn till pronounced cured, by the priest. The garments, 
* Ex, xx: 14. Lev. xv. Lev. xviii. Deut. xxiii: 10, &c. 20 
THE IIEALTn LAWS OF MOSES. 
furniture, or house, infected with contagion, or other 
unwholesome decay common in that climate, were to be 
carefully purified, or, if need be, destroyed. Thus every 
precaution was taken against the spread of disease. 
BE CLEAN FROM CONTAGION.* 
Much preventable sickness is now caused by the 
neglect of this law. I have known a lady to take 
the small pox from a conveyance in which she trav- 
elled. Deaths have been known to result from rid- 
ing in street cabs which had not been cleaned after 
carrying patients to the hospital. The following strik- 
ing case came under my personal knowledge. Among 
a company of young people, boarding together in a city, 
under the care of an instructor, one young girl was sud- 
denly prostrated with diphtheria. She had been appar- 
ently in perfect health, and the boarding house was com- 
fortable and apparently well kept and well situated. 
Careful inquiry, however, drew forth the fact that a pre- 
vious visitor at the house had, a few weeks before, suf- 
fered from the same disease, probably brought from else- 
where, and had occupied the same bed which had not 
been properly cleaned. By help of the physician’s or- 
ders, the infected bed and bedstead were removed from 
the house, the room thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, 
and none of the other inmates bad the disease. 
The sick girl was removed to a well cleaned upper 
room, having, fortunately, two sunny windows and an 
open fire, which is one of the best possible means of ven- 
tilation, with an adjoining room for the nurse. Nothing 
unclean was allowed to remain in the room. The pa- 
tient’s clothing and bedding, sheets, blankets and pil- 
low-cases, were used *>ne twenty-four hours and aired the 
next, a double supply of everything being kept for 
:Lev. xiii; 45, &c. Lev. xiv. THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
21 
the purpose. This was not accomplished without much 
impatience and remonstrance on the part of the house- 
keeper, who said it would kill the girl, and that she 
knew, for she had nursed a patient through twelve weeks 
of typhus fever, without once changing a rag he had 
on. The struggle for cleanness was rewarded by a 
very unusually rapid and complete recovery, with no 
lingering after effects of weakness or unsoundness, 
though the case was a well marked and threatening one 
at the beginning. There are some cases of acute lung 
trouble where it may be necessary to take the greatest 
care in changing the garments, and the least cold taken 
would turn the balance of life and death. In serious 
cases like this, you should always try to get the advice 
of a good physician. 
In your small or crowded houses, it may be hard to 
secure this perfection of seclusion and comfort for the 
sick, but you should do your best for it, especially in the 
case of contagious disease. You will find it easier to 
take good care of one than to have a whole family sick 
on your hands, and you will be far less likely to take 
the disease yourself. You owe it to your neighbors too, 
not to spread it among them. If you live in a city, 
it is your duty to notify a physician at once, and to will- 
ingly submit to his orders to have the patient removed, 
if necessary, to a hospital where he can be properly and 
safely cared for. If you live in the country where no 
such provision is made, it is equally your duty to notify 
a good physician and follow his orders. Keep the chil- 
dren, especially, out of the way, out of doors in the pure 
air, just as much as possible. 
I have said you should get the advice of a good physi- 
cian. Yrou will perhaps be surprised to find that the 
Health Laws of Moses absolutely forbade the practice 
and employment of conjuration, the various supersti- 22 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
tious and false ways used by so many quack doctors. * 
BE NOT SUPERSTITIOUS. 
So strict was this law that they were commanded to put 
such to death. The misunderstanding and misapplica- 
tion of this law of Moses, something less than two hun- 
dred years ago in New England, produced a great deal 
of excitement and trouble, and many innocent persons 
were cruelly put to death as witches. It may not be 
well for us to carry out the full rigors of the Mosaic pen- 
alties, but if any one but an intentional murderer could 
deserve death of human law, it would be one who for 
money, basely takes advantage of the needs of his suf- 
fering fellow-men, and risks their health and life by 
pretending to powers which he knows he does not pos- 
sess ; takes advantage of the agony of anxiety which is 
eager to try anything for the relief of some dear friend, 
and wastes the last chance, it may be, of trying any- 
thing with success, all to make money by selling his 
worse than worthless nostrums. 
God's curse of death is as inexorably attached to these 
false practices now, as it ever was. In the beautiful 
islands of the Pacific, a whole nation is fading out 
of existence, at the rate of a thousand more deaths 
than births every year, and all physicians and intelli- 
gent persons there are agreed that one of the two great 
causes of its decay is the popular belief in this very 
‘‘conjuration” and witch-doctor’s drugs. Nor is this 
kind of superstition confined to the Sandwich Islands, 
or to any one part of our own country. The number 
of advertisements of quack-doctors, “seventh sons of 
seventh sons,” “mediums,” “clairvoyants,” and the 
whole race of such cheats, is evidence enough, and sad 
enough, of the wide extent of ignorance and superstition. 
* Ley. xix; 31. xx; 6. Deut. xviii: 10, 12. 23 
Would you trnst your watch or clock, when it needs 
repairing, to the hands of a man who had never seen 
the wrorks of one, and did not know one wheel from 
another ? Far more complex and delicate is the won- 
derful mechanism of this human body, and of vastly 
more importance to us. Only the careful study of years, 
with all the aids of an intelligent mind and scientific 
education, can qualify any one to treat its maladies. 
But a little more knowledge generally diffused among 
the people, such as all school teachers should pre- 
pare themselves to give, would be enough to con- 
vince them of the need of taking care of their bodies 
and trusting them in sickness only to competent 
hands. Trust God who made your bodies, and the 
intelligent physicians who have made His laws of na- 
ture their study, and let the conjurer and quack doc- 
tor alone, as Moses commanded his people to. Be not 
superstitious. 
THE HEALTH LAWS OE MOSES. 
BE TEMPERATE.* 
This was another of his Health Laws. They were, 
in detail and application, adapted to the needs of the 
people at the time they were given, and total absti- 
nence, when every man had his own vineyard and could 
drink the pure juice of the grape, was not urged then 
as it afterwards was by King Solomon, when the ser- 
pent of drunkenness had been found in the cnp. Yet 
even from the beginning, Moses charged the Levites, who 
were the priests and teachers of the people, to drink no 
wine or strong drink when they went into the taberna- 
cle, “that ye may put difference between holy and un- 
holy, and between clean and unclean, and that ye may 
teach the children of Israel all the statutes which the 
Lord hath spoken unto them by the hand of Moses.” 
♦Lev. x: 8-10. Deut. xxix: 6. 24 
THE HEALTH LAWS OE MOSES. 
And at the end of their wanderings, he called the atten- 
tion of the whole people to this fact as a message from 
God—“I have led you forty years in the wilderness; ye 
have not eaten bread, neither have ye drunk wine nor 
strong drink.'’ The bread had been supplied by man- 
na, which seemed to contain all its properties of nour- 
ishment, but instead of wine, God gave them water. A 
grand object lesson on the purer life, it was for them, 
and us. The “streams in the wilderness” which gushed 
forth from the smitten rock, were of pure and living wa- 
ter, as much within our reach now, as then within theirs. 
With it, we too can live without wine or strong drink, 
and live a higher, purer life. 
There is another significant fact to observe here. When 
we know that it is a well acknoweledged fact, proved by 
countless statistics of prisons and poorliouses, that every 
year, one hundred thousand criminals and eight hundred 
thousand paupers are made by intemperance in the 
United States, we can see how long a drunkard could 
have escaped the strict penalties of the moral and social 
laws of Moses. A man who gives himself up to habits 
of intoxication cannot fulfil the law of love to his 
neighbor, in his house or in society. 
That the law of temperance is a health law, is clearly 
evident. A drinking man has less chance for his life 
when disease or accident befalls him, than a temperate 
man whose blood is pure from the poison of alcohol. 
This is a fact acknowledged by all medical men, and 
acted upon by all life-insurance companies. A drunk- 
ard’s life is full of pains and bodily torment; a drunk- 
ard’s grave is generally an early grave. And the worst 
of it is that he transmits his weakness to his children, 
and often to the third and fourth generation. When 
they fail to manifest his love for drink, they are most like- 
ly, as every good physician will tell you, to be puny and 25 
sickly; scrofulous, rickety, or consumptive. Sometimes 
the brain is affected; the history of insane asylums shows 
that the dread inheritance of the drunkard’s child is of- 
ten insanity or idiocy. The thought of what he is pre- 
paring for his innocent children ought to be enough to 
make a young man sign the pledge and keep it. 
Another grand Health Law of Moses is one whieh was 
ordained long before the ten commandments were given: 
at the creation of the world; the law of Sabbath rest. 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
“REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY— 
IN IT THOU SHALT NOT DO ANY WORK.”* 
We will look at it here simply as a health law, 
apart from the religious blessings of a day devoted 
in a special way to the worship of God. 
This strong but delicate machine, the body, cannot 
stand the strain of perpetual motion any more than any 
other machine can. It needs rest, and the repair which 
Nature carries on during rest and sleep. The regular 
sleep of the night is very important, but even this is not 
enough. And now, between the needs of the working 
man and the demands of labor and selfish gain, comes 
the blessed rest of the Sabbath. It is the working-man’s 
gift from God, one of the rights of his divine Magna 
Charta, and if he knew its value, he would not willing- 
ly give it up. It was mercifully extended to the animal 
creation; the Israelites were commanded to let their an- 
imals of labor rest upon that day, showing thus evident- 
ly that it is a physical as well as a moral law. 
As to the manner of employing Sunday, I will not say 
much here; only, that rest need not be always total in- 
action. A change of employment is often the best kind 
of rest, and intellectual activity may healthfully follow 
bodily labor. A laboring man has well said that “the 
* Ex. xx: 8-11.—xvi: 23.—xxiii: 12.—xxxv; 3. 26 
THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
Sabbath comes to give rest to matter and liberty to 
mind.” In general, whatever continues the strain of 
the week’s work, whether physical or mental, is not Sab- 
bath rest, the need of which is now generally acknowl- 
edged by merely scientific as well as religious men. 
France, after the revolution of 1791, under a govern- 
ment which disavowed all religion, tried to show the 
world that it could do without this Health Law of the 
Bible, and set apart instead, every tenth day as a day of 
rest and amusement. Neither man nor beast could bear 
the strain of nine days of work and one of revelry, and 
the country had to go back to the law of one day’s rest 
in seven. It is the health law of God in nature. 
The Israelites were accustomed to prepare for the 
Sabbath by cleansing their houses, clothes and persons. 
This is also the physical preparation for the Christian 
Sabbath, and is one of the ways in which it is beneficial, 
coming regularly to remind the family of all the blessings 
of health, order and decency, and giving a tone of thrift 
and comfort to the whole week. Well spent Sabbaths 
of rest are great safeguards of family life, and health, 
and civilization. 
“SIX DAYS SHALT THOU LABOR.” * 
Work is as much a Health Law as Rest. It may be a 
new idea to you that the Fourth Commandment is not 
only to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy, but 
to work six days and work industriously—“ Do all your 
work.” Indeed the Sabbath belongs to the working man. 
Nobody deserves its rest who does not work in the place 
God puts him, with hands or brain. Riches only set 
him free to work for the world instead of for himself. 
That work is healthful for mind and body, is a fact 
no longer doubtful. I have before me, as I write, the 
* Ex. xx; 9, THE HEALTH LAWS OF MOSES. 
27 
report of one of the largest Insane asylums in this coun- 
try, and here, in its statistics of the condition in life of 
those admitted from the beginning, I find that the third 
highest source of supply, out of twelve classes of peo- 
ple, is that of the unemployed. 
Occasional holidays, thanksgivings, and days commem- 
orative of national events, were enjoined upon the Israel- 
ites, and careful directions given for their proper and or- 
derly observance, but, apart from these, there were six 
working days in the week. So there are still, and no 
man can expect to lay up a store for old age and his chil- 
dren, or to accomplish much in the world, who shirks 
any of them. The necessity of earning our bread by the 
sweat of the brow was laid upon man as a penalty, but, 
rightly submitted to, it becomes a blessing, bringing with 
it all the comforts of home, and freedom and health of 
body and mind. The sleep of the laboring man is sweet. 
Frederika Bremer, a Swedish writer, tells a pretty sto- 
ry of a peasant couple who, falling into idle ways, were 
alarmed by seeing a great iron hand stretch through the 
door of their little cabin, and snatch away one after an- 
other of their possessions, furniture, clothes and food, till 
at last only the bare floor and walls were left, and they 
began in terror to work again for something to eat, when 
gradually, all the things they had lost were brought back 
one by one, and set down in their place by a soft, quiet 
hand, until everything was restored, and still more was 
brought. You will easily see that the iron hand was the 
hand of Idleness, the giving hand, the hand of Industry. 
If you have felt the stern grasp of the iron hand already 
on your possessions, be warned in time. 
There is no such hard work as laziness. Honest labor, 
with regular rest, hurts no one, but is honorable and 
healthful to all. It sends the blood coursing healthily 
through the veins, strengthens the muscles, gives sweet 28 
THE HEALTH LAWS OP MOSES. 
sleep, good appetite, an easy conscience, and a happy 
heart. 
There were other laws of Moses, not so strictly health 
laws, but calculated to bring prosperity and peace. 
Economy, hospitality, generous provision for the honest 
poor, proper cultivation of the soil, planting of trees, and 
provision against the exhaustion of the land by over-cul- 
tivation ; all these were enjoined by the great Law-giver. 
They were God’s laws for the people, and, with varied 
adaptation to our altered circumstances, are just as 
good and binding now. 
The curse pronounced against the Israelites, if they did 
not obey the Health Laws, is very striking, and every 
Sanitary Commission, and man of scientific knowledge 
of such matters, would acknowledge that it is still in 
full force. 
This was it: 
“If ye shall despise my statutes and break my cove- 
nant, I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint 
over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague that 
shall consume the eyes and cause sorrow of heart; your 
land shall not yield her increase, neither shall the trees 
of the land yield their fruit. When ye are gathered to- 
gether in your cities, I will send the pestilence among 
you, and I will make your cities waste, and I will bring 
the land into desolation.” * 
Do you shrink with horror from these judgments, and 
from all the disgusting details of the sins against nature 
which lead to them, upon which we have been so long 
dwelling ? Then turn from them to the opposite picture 
of homes well ordered, and full of health and happiness. 
All over this land are now going up new homes on 
which depends the future prosperity or disaster of our 
nation. Young men and women who are building these 
* Lev. xxvi 14-82. THE HEALTH LAWS OP MOSES. 
29 
homes: resolve to make them the abodes of temperance, 
and purity and peace. Let them be, however humble, 
such as the little home in Bethany, where you can ask 
the Master to enter. The soldier is careful to keep his 
quarters ready for military inspection, but Moses told the 
Israelites, “The Lord thy God walketh in the midst of 
thy camp to deliver thee; therefore shall thy camp be ho- 
ly: that He see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away 
from thee.”* 
You have heard the curse pronounced upon disobedi- 
ence of the Health Laws. Now listen to the blessing 
that still follows obedience. 
“If ye hearken to these judgments, and keep and do 
them, thou shalt be blessed above all people, and 
the Lord will take away from thee all sickness, and will 
put none of the evil diseases which thou knowest upon 
thee.” f 
* Deut. xxiii: 14. 
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These publications are strong and condensed statements of 
the fundamental laws of health, with illustrations of the results 
of breaking these laws and advice as to the best and easiest 
way of living in obedience to them. The series will provide 
as simply and in as attractive a manner as possible, carefully 
prepared information upon all points directly connected with 
physical life, as cleanliness of the person and house, ventila- 
tion, drainage, care of children and invalids, preparation of 
food, etc.; and will be issued under the title of Hampton 
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G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Publishers, New York. 
Editing Committee. 
Mrs. M. F. Armstrong, N. Y. City. 
Miss Helen W. Ludlow, Hampton. 
Stephen Smith, M.D., N. Y. City. 
S. C. Armstrong, Hampton. 
At a meeting of the Executive Committee of the American 
Social Science Association, held June 8th, 1878, Prof. Pierce 
in the chair, it was unanimously voted, as follows : 
Resolved, That the American Social Science Association learns with 
pleasure ot the work undertaken at Hampton, in Virginia, to spread 
among the people of Virginia, and of the South in general, a knowledge 
of Sanitary Science popularly set forth ; and that from an examination 
af the three Sanitary Tracts Of the proposed series, viz.: The Health 
Laws of Moses. The Duty of Teachers, and Preventable Diseases, the 
Executive Committee ot this Association is persuaded that the impor- 
tant work, thus undertaken, will be well performed We would there- 
fore commend these Tracts to all readers, at the North as well as at the 
South, and would recommend their wide distribution in the way best 
suited to promote the circulation of them. 
1’nce, per Number, Scents; per roo, per. 1 coo $40.00 
Now Ready No. 1, Health Laws of Moses : No. 2, Duty 
of Teachers; No. 3, Preventable Diseases; No. 4, Who 
Found Jamie ? ; No. 5, A Haunted House.