sanitation

87:1.4The sav­ages sat up all night and talked when a mem­ber of the clan died; they feared they too would die if they fell asleep in the vicin­ity of a corpse. Con­ta­gion from the corpse sub­stan­ti­ated the fear of the dead, and all peo­ples, at one time or an­other, have em­ployed elab­o­rate pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies de­signed to cleanse an in­di­vid­ual af­ter con­tact with the dead. The an­cients be­lieved that light must be pro­vided for a corpse; a dead body was never per­mit­ted to re­main in the dark. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury, can­dles are still burned in death cham­bers, and men still sit up with the dead. So-called civ­i­lized man has hardly yet com­pletely elim­i­nated the fear of dead bod­ies from his phi­los­o­phy of life.

81:3.3About twelve thou­sand years ago the era of the in­de­pen­dent cities was dawn­ing. And these prim­i­tive trad­ing and man­u­fac­tur­ing cities were al­ways sur­rounded by zones of agri­cul­ture and cat­tle rais­ing. While it is true that in­dus­try was pro­moted by the el­e­va­tion of the stan­dards of liv­ing, you should have no mis­con­cep­tion re­gard­ing the re­fine­ments of early ur­ban life. The early races were not overly neat and clean, and the av­er­age prim­i­tive com­mu­nity rose from one to two feet ev­ery twenty-five years as the re­sult of the mere ac­cu­mu­la­tion of dirt and trash. Cer­tain of these olden cities also rose above the sur­round­ing ground very quickly be­cause their un­baked mud huts were short-lived, and it was the cus­tom to build new dwellings di­rectly on top of the ru­ins of the old.

89:2.5The idea of con­fes­sion and for­give­ness early ap­peared in prim­i­tive re­li­gion. Men would ask for­give­ness at a pub­lic meet­ing for sins they in­tended to com­mit the fol­low­ing week. Con­fes­sion was merely a rite of re­mis­sion, also a pub­lic no­ti­fi­ca­tion of de­file­ment, a rit­ual of cry­ing “un­clean, un­clean!” Then fol­lowed all the rit­u­al­is­tic schemes of pu­rifi­ca­tion. All an­cient peo­ples prac­ticed these mean­ing­less cer­e­monies. Many ap­par­ently hy­gienic cus­toms of the early tribes were largely cer­e­mo­nial.

73:5.3The san­i­tary ar­range­ments of the Gar­den were far in ad­vance of any­thing that had been at­tempted thereto­fore on Uran­tia. The drink­ing wa­ter of Eden was kept whole­some by the strict ob­ser­vance of the san­i­tary reg­u­la­tions de­signed to con­serve its pu­rity. Dur­ing these early times much trou­ble came about from ne­glect of these rules, but Van grad­u­ally im­pressed upon his as­so­ciates the im­por­tance of al­low­ing noth­ing to fall into the wa­ter sup­ply of the Gar­den.

73:5.4Be­fore the later es­tab­lish­ment of a sew­age-dis­posal sys­tem the Eden­ites prac­ticed the scrupu­lous burial of all waste or de­com­pos­ing ma­te­rial. Amadon’s in­spec­tors made their rounds each day in search for pos­si­ble causes of sick­ness. Uran­tians did not again awaken to the im­por­tance of the pre­ven­tion of hu­man dis­eases un­til the later times of the nine­teenth and twen­ti­eth cen­turies. Be­fore the dis­rup­tion of the Adamic regime a cov­ered brick-con­duit dis­posal sys­tem had been con­structed which ran be­neath the walls and emp­tied into the river of Eden al­most a mile be­yond the outer or lesser wall of the Gar­den.

88:5.1Since any­thing con­nected with the body could be­come a fe­tish, the ear­li­est magic had to do with hair and nails. Se­crecy at­ten­dant upon body elim­i­na­tion grew up out of fear that an en­emy might get pos­ses­sion of some­thing de­rived from the body and em­ploy it in detri­men­tal magic; all exc­reta of the body were there­fore care­fully buried. Pub­lic spit­ting was re­frained from be­cause of the fear that saliva would be used in dele­te­ri­ous magic; spit­tle was al­ways cov­ered. Even food rem­nants, cloth­ing, and or­na­ments could be­come in­stru­ments of magic. The sav­age never left any rem­nants of his meal on the ta­ble. And all this was done through fear that one’s en­e­mies might use these things in mag­i­cal rites, not from any ap­pre­ci­a­tion of the hy­gienic value of such prac­tices.

66:5.177. The guard­i­ans of health and life. This coun­cil was con­cerned with the in­tro­duc­tion of san­i­ta­tion and the pro­mo­tion of prim­i­tive hy­giene and was led by Lut.

66:5.18Its mem­bers taught much that was lost dur­ing the con­fu­sion of sub­se­quent ages, never to be re­dis­cov­ered un­til the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. They taught man­kind that cook­ing, boil­ing and roast­ing, was a means of avoid­ing sick­ness; also that such cook­ing greatly re­duced in­fant mor­tal­ity and fa­cil­i­tated early wean­ing.

66:5.19Many of the early teach­ings of Lut’s guard­i­ans of health per­sisted among the tribes of earth on down to the days of Moses, even though they be­came much gar­bled and were greatly changed.

66:5.20The great ob­sta­cle in the way of pro­mot­ing hy­giene among these ig­no­rant peo­ples con­sisted in the fact that the real causes of many dis­eases were too small to be seen by the naked eye, and also be­cause they all held fire in su­per­sti­tious re­gard. It re­quired thou­sands of years to per­suade them to burn refuse. In the mean­time they were urged to bury their de­cay­ing rub­bish. The great san­i­tary ad­vance of this epoch came from the dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge re­gard­ing the health-giv­ing and dis­ease-de­stroy­ing prop­er­ties of sun­light.

66:5.21Be­fore the Prince’s ar­rival, bathing had been an ex­clu­sively re­li­gious cer­e­mo­nial. It was in­deed dif­fi­cult to per­suade prim­i­tive men to wash their bod­ies as a health prac­tice. Lut fi­nally in­duced the re­li­gious teach­ers to in­clude cleans­ing with wa­ter as a part of the pu­rifi­ca­tion cer­e­monies to be prac­ticed in con­nec­tion with the noon­time de­vo­tions, once a week, in the wor­ship of the Fa­ther of all.

66:5.22These guard­i­ans of health also sought to in­tro­duce hand­shak­ing in sub­sti­tu­tion for saliva ex­change or blood drink­ing as a seal of per­sonal friend­ship and as a to­ken of group loy­alty. But when out from un­der the com­pelling pres­sure of the teach­ings of their su­pe­rior lead­ers, these prim­i­tive peo­ples were not slow in re­vert­ing to their for­mer health-de­stroy­ing and dis­ease-breed­ing prac­tices of ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion.

69:6.4Though An­don, the dis­cov­erer of fire, avoided treat­ing it as an ob­ject of wor­ship, many of his de­scen­dants re­garded the flame as a fe­tish or as a spirit. They failed to reap the san­i­tary ben­e­fits of fire be­cause they would not burn refuse. Prim­i­tive man feared fire and al­ways sought to keep it in good hu­mor, hence the sprin­kling of in­cense. Un­der no cir­cum­stances would the an­cients spit in a fire, nor would they ever pass be­tween any­one and a burn­ing fire. Even the iron pyrites and flints used in strik­ing fire were held sa­cred by early man­kind.

130:2.1Je­sus and his friends tar­ried in Cae­sarea be­yond the time ex­pected be­cause one of the huge steer­ing pad­dles of the ves­sel on which they in­tended to em­bark was dis­cov­ered to be in dan­ger of cleav­ing. The cap­tain de­cided to re­main in port while a new one was be­ing made. There was a short­age of skilled wood­work­ers for this task, so Je­sus vol­un­teered to as­sist. Dur­ing the evenings Je­sus and his friends strolled about on the beau­ti­ful wall which served as a prom­e­nade around the port. Ga­nid greatly en­joyed Je­sus’ ex­pla­na­tion of the wa­ter sys­tem of the city and the tech­nique whereby the tides were uti­lized to flush the city’s streets and sew­ers. This youth of In­dia was much im­pressed with the tem­ple of Au­gus­tus, sit­u­ated upon an el­e­va­tion and sur­mounted by a colos­sal statue of the Ro­man em­peror. The sec­ond af­ter­noon of their stay the three of them at­tended a per­for­mance in the enor­mous am­phithe­ater which could seat twenty thou­sand per­sons, and that night they went to a Greek play at the the­ater. These were the first ex­hi­bi­tions of this sort Ga­nid had ever wit­nessed, and he asked Je­sus many ques­tions about them. On the morn­ing of the third day they paid a for­mal visit to the gov­er­nor’s palace, for Cae­sarea was the cap­i­tal of Pales­tine and the res­i­dence of the Ro­man procu­ra­tor.