Medicine through time
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Public Health in the countryside
Source 1
Florence Nightingale on health in the countryside
Watersupply almost entirely from shallow wells, often uncovered, mostly in the cottagegarden, not far from a pervious privy pit, a pigsty, or a huge collection of house refuse, polluted by the foulness soaking into it. The liquid manure from the pigsty trickles through the ground into the well. Often after heavy rain the cottagers complain that their wellwater becomes thick.
The water in many shallow wells has been analysed. And some have been closed; others cleaned out. But when no particular impurity is detected, no care has been taken to stop the too threatening pollution, or to prohibit the supply. In one village which had a pump, it was so far from one end that a pond in an adjoining field was used for their supply.
It may be said that, up to the present time, practically nothing
has been done by the Sanitary Authorities to effect the removal of house refuse,
etc.
From Florence Nightingale, Selected Writings of Florence Nightingale, ed. Lucy Ridgely Seymer (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1954), pp. 38287 hosted online at the Internet Modern History Sourcebook. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts for introductory level classes in modern European and World history
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