Athothis : a satire on modern medicine / by Thomas C. Minor.
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of creation, laws have been enacted to enforce habits of personal purity. Strange fact, that the fundamental principles of sanitation derived from the Egyptians may be found formulated in the Mosaic Code; and this docu- ment and Code of Menu have never been improved, not- withstanding the boasted progress of sanitation in the last two hundred years. The practical views of the Jews, obtained from my people, are still the foundation-stones of public hygiene ; and the precepts enunciated by the Bible contain the very essence of all sanitary knowledge. This hygiene of ages past has been of more real utility to man than the quack sanitary regulations of the pres- ent day, which are for the most part conceived in the in- terests of architects, contractors, builders, and plumbers, who proclaim that their methods are scientific. Your modern medical sanitarian encourages these impostors and destroyers of life, by claiming that all causes of morbific action are dependent on specific germs, invisible to the naked eye, but capable of being observed under the microscope ; germs whose toxic properties may be increased or diminished at pleasure by means of culture ; germs which may be propagated or destroyed, following the desire of the investigator, claiming that these minute organisms are the cause and not the result of disease. Their views have been accepted by the vast majority of physicians and the laity as final and conclusive, not only on account of their plausibility, but also for their adaptability to medical usage, as the germ theory serves as a cloak under which to hide professional ignorance. The world can not see the germs floating around in the atmosphere, but the doctor assures it that the little in- fecting demons are there as thick as the sands on old ocean's beach; and it is at this point that modern