There
are country districts in which he would find imperfect drainage and
could tell of the wonderful system by which Rome was kept sweet and
clean. Nothing would delight him more than a visit to Panama to see what
the organization of knowledge has been able to accomplish. Everywhere
he could tour the country as a sanitary expert, preaching the gospel
of good water supply and good drainage, two of the great elements in
civilization, in which in many places we have not yet reached the Roman
standard.
CHAPTER III -- MEDIAEVAL MEDICINE
THERE are waste places of the earth which fill one with terror--not
simply because they are waste; one has not such feelings in the desert
nor in the vast solitude of the ocean. Very different is it where the
desolation has overtaken a brilliant and flourishing product of man's
head and hand. To know that
. . . the Lion and the Lizard keep
The Courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep
sends a chill to the heart, and one trembles with a sense of human
instability. With this feeling we enter the Middle Ages. Following the
glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome, a desolation came
upon the civilized world, in which the light of learning burned low,
flickering almost to extinction.
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