DIRT AND DISEASE.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR."] Sin,—You draw attention to the interesting article of Father- Bridgett in the Contemporary, and coincide with him in thinking- that I borrowed without acknowledgment from Michelet the assertion that for a thousand years nobody in Europe took a bath. The reverend father and the writer of your- article must have seen only newspaper reports of my ad- dress, for in it I expressly say (see page 10) "if their historian. Michelet is to be believed." This form of expression was not one of deep conviction as to the literal accuracy of the statement. Father Bridgett's attack ought to have been against Michelet, not against myself ; for he gives no reply to my statements as to the- origin of the various plagues which he will find .detailed in "locker's History of the Epidemics of the Middle-Ages," and he simply avoids reference to the specific cases with which I illustrated the condition of the monks in these ages. But Father Bridgett's article is too interesting and instructive to be anSwered thus briefly. If I have time to spare from my Parliamentary duties and those of a hard-worked commission on which I am engaged, I hope to convince such courteous and fair antagonists. as the father and your own writer that there is ample historical evidence for the connection of the plagues of the middle-ages with the dirt which then prevailed.—I am, Sir, &c.,
LYON PLAYFAIR.
[We had not Mr. Lyon Playfair's address at hand when w& wrote, and took for granted that his remark was borrowed from, Michelet simply from the improbability that the same epigram should have proceeded independently from two different persons. But though we did not know that Mr. Playfair had quoted it with the author's name, we did not even suggest any reproach against him for not acknowledging it, simply saying that it was probable that he had derived the epigram from the source from which it turns out that he did derive it, and stated that he derived it. Nothing we said in the least degree challenged the statement that the medneval plagues were chiefly due to dirt. Probably that has been true, not only in the middle-ages, but in the earlier and latter days. The Plague of London certainly was due in great degree to that cause, and it was not a medimval plague. The plague of Jerusalem in David's reign was probably enough due to the same cause, and was not a medixval plague. Our drift was, we need hardly say, not in the least adverse to Mr. Lyon Play- fair's ; it was only a comment on the slightly superstitious element which popular enthusiasm seems likely to introduce into the modern campaign against dirt, as also into the modern campaign against drunkenness.—En. Spectator.]
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